Archive of Our Own

To say Caine was erratic recently was an understatement. 

At first it had just been annoying seeing him glitch into a room to say one word and then pause as if he was stuck for 3 minutes, but after a while it became downright unnerving. 

If that had been the only change it could have been manageable, but there was something else… off about the circus. He seemed to be pushing boundaries with the code as much as possible, poofing things in and out of existence for no apparent reason. Even going as far to change the times- pushing them forwards into the day or backwards into the night. There was one day he completely banished the moon and kept it daylight for at least two regular days, or at least what the circus considered days. Without an actual clock things tended to get confusing. 

Then there was the issue of censors- or lack thereof. Only every other curse was being bleeped out now, and it was very lenient on what was considered cursing. Bubble’s censor was completely broken and he babbled incorrigible nonsense about porny plotlines that could only be found in the deepest parts of the internet. They had to learn to tune him out. 

Something else that Pomni noticed was the subtle loosening of her clothes from her body. Before if she had tried to take off her hat or even her collar, she was met with nothing but resistance. It was like they weren’t clothes at all, more so extra pieces of her skin. But that wasn’t the case recently. 

She had noticed it during an adventure where she had fallen flat on her face and went to dust her hair off. Her finger had slipped slightly under her jester hat, lifting it away from her head. She had shoved back on and looked to see if anyone had noticed, but they were all focused elsewhere. Thank God. 

Afterwards she had given a lame excuse and headed straight back to her room. She slammed the door behind her, heart beating in her chest as she pulled at her collar. 

It gave way, but just a bit. There was no way she was going to be able to fully undress. Pomni breathed out, her whole body sagging with relief. 

She wondered though, it wasn’t like there would be anything down there- right? Just silicone-y flesh colored plastic, if anything at all. There’s no way she could have genitals… Right? 

I mean, how many of them even wore clothes? 

Her, Jax, Ragatha and Kinger were the ones whose bodies made sense for it. If she randomly grew genitals, would the others follow? Would Gangle and Zooble even be able to? Where would their pieces go? She tried to imagine it and just felt dizzy. 

What a freak honestly, if they all knew she was deep in thought about whether a toy and a ribbon could have sex organs they’d probably all be disgusted by her. 

Pomni had thought about her body- her digital body - pretty frequently if she was honest. She wasn’t completely sure how to feel about it. Sometimes she hated having her own sexuality completely stripped from her. The way she used to self soothe alone in her room when she couldn’t sleep when she was real, and now didn’t have that choice. Having no say in what her body looked like or how she presented herself- she hated it all.

But she also wasn’t naive. There were times when she was grateful for it. 

All bodies in the digital circus were not created equally. Humanoid bodies like Jax, Ragatha, and Pomni’s were lucky, while people like Zooble and Gangle just struggled to get around in the vessels that were chosen for them. 

Bodies that could be easily overpowered.

Maybe she was just a nihilist, maybe it was a worst-case-scenario, maybe she was jaded. But she knew for a fact if she was locked in an area with complete strangers in the real world that would be her first thought. 

She didn’t think any of the others would do something like that. It made her feel sick for subconsciously even thinking they were capable enough but, well, who knows? Who knows what a place like this can turn people into, if they were ever given the chance.

So she hopes they aren’t given the chance. Ever. 

She pulled at her costume again, and the fabric moved slightly. She swallowed her anxiety and headed to bed. 

With Caine’s sudden defects, it seemed like his creativity had flown out the door with his sanity. 

Not that his adventures had ever been truly good or thought out, but Tetris was just lazy. 

As the T-shaped block fell down swiftly, Pomni jumped to avoid it. She was the only one not on the top platform yet and she was reeling. Even Gangle had made it up before her. Not that she had anything against Gangle, it was just, well, unlikely. She grunted. 

“Jax, help me up.” 

He stood at the edge of the platform, smirking down on her with that shit-eating grin he always seemed to have these days. He reached down and pulled his hand back as soon as Pomni tried to grab it.

“Jax!” 

She whined, frustrated at herself for believing him.

“Sorry,” he replied insincerely, “I saw a bee.”

As a game of back-and-forth, Pomni was finally able to grab onto his wrist before he had the chance to pull away. Jax sighed dramatically, but ultimately pulled her up. 

She forgot to drop his wrist before the portal opened, and when she came out on the other side- she was still holding it.

Her glove had slipped off of his wrist, falling onto his hand instead. 

Holding hands. 

She thinks about this moment all the time. The moment where something so small began the end of her life. The second that everything went wrong. 

“How was the- WOAH!”

Caine’s head was practically spinning when he saw them. Pomni blushed and dropped Jax’s hand, but the damage was done. 

Irreversible. 

Caine cooed, his hands coming up to cradle his face. 

“Jax and Pomni sittin’ in a tree K-I-S-S-I-N-G!”

Everyone had paused. They didn’t seem to know what to make of Caine’s teasing, it wasn’t like he had done it much before. Zooble burst out laughing, which prompted Gangle and Kinger to giggle as well. 

Pomni was mortified, but she knew it would pass. At least that’s what she had thought. 

“First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes a baby in a baby carriage!” 

And then he snapped his fingers.

Everyone looked around, expecting something. Usually when Caine snaps, it means he’s creating something that could grab you under the floorboards or something else that might fall from the sky and crush you. 

But there was nothing.

Everyone was stumped, heads rolling as they scanned the room for what he had done. And Caine just floated there with some kind of sadistic smug look on his face.

And then Pomni felt it.

Something move.

Something move inside her.

She swallowed thickly, her hand coming up to her stomach. 

She later wished that she hadn’t done that. She wished that she had been able to grin and bear it and not let it be known what had just happened to her. 

Maybe later she would have chosen to tell, to grab for a support system. 

But right now, the hand on her stomach meant that everyone knew.

It was so silent you could hear a pin drop, or maybe even the buzzing of the headset battery that brought them all here to begin with.

Their faces were horrified and she wished the images would go away. She didn’t want to be looked at like that. She couldn’t even describe what was making her so upset about the expressions- she didn’t know. If it was anyone else in her situation she would have probably also had the same horror-filled pitying look that the room had now.

Everyone was looking at her except for Ragatha, who was staring at Jax.

Jax’s reaction scared Pomni. She couldn’t look at him. The small glance she had gotten just showed him as completely blank. A shell. big dinner plate eyes that couldn’t see anything and a mouth so tight-lipped it could disappear into his face. 

Caine sensed something was off and he pouted as if he couldn’t understand why everyone wasn’t jumping in excitement. His face furrowed. 

“I’ve done my best to sustain a healthy environment for humans, giving you things you need like food and water and entertainment.”

Caine started, his head glitching in and out of focus. He was upset. Obviously upset. Scarily upset, but no one could bring themselves to care about him at this very moment.

“But I realized I forgot something important to human beings,”

His voice swam in and out of her mind as Pomni continued to just stare in his direction. She wasn’t even seeing him, or anyone for that matter, she was just staring past it all. Past the wall, past the circus, past the code, past the computer screen, past her own sanity.

“The act of creation.”

Pomni’s stomach dropped through the floor.

Please don’t mean sex. 

She pawed at her stomach, gripping the fabric. It didn’t give way, it stayed stuck to her like skin. There was nothing under it, just as there had never been. 

She tugged her collar. This time it moved slightly.

Please don’t mean sex. 

“The act of raising someone to outlive you, the sole purpose of many animals.”

Caine stopped his spiel, suddenly smiling. Looking back at it, Pomni thinks it must have been a much kinder gesture than it came across as. It seemed taunting, almost daring.

She wanted to kill him. Not punch or hit or yell at. She wanted to dig her teeth into his joints and pull him apart piece by piece. 

“Plus, it’s super dramatic! Life changing stuff for everyone involved.” Caine pulled out a bunch of text posts seemingly from thin air, scrolling through them at lighting speed. 

Am I the asshole for not watching my sister’s kids while she went bowling with my ex?

Am I the asshole for not letting my parents be in my child’s life?

Am I the asshole for not babysitting for my sick aunt because she tried to kill me when I was 7?

Am I the asshole for not letting my best friend's kid come to my birthday party?

You based a major change to our lives off of REDDIT STORIES? 

Pomni wanted to shriek, but the words wouldn’t come out. All she managed was to slightly drool on herself. 

She watched it drop off her bottom lip and splatter onto the floor below. Her insides twisted. She felt warm. The small splatter was soon followed by a larger monsoon of black bile as Pomni doubled over and began vomiting. Her body hacked and writhed, emptying things she didn’t even know were inside her. 

She was shaking, tears pricking her eyes.

She looked up and saw the shadows of eyes on her, all of them horrified and pitying. Looking at her like she was cracking and would break any minute.

She had never felt so exposed in her life. 

She wanted to wake up. She wanted to be thrown  into whatever fucked up computer lab had brought her here to begin with and set the place on fire. She never wanted to see a piece of technology again in her life. If she ever saw the semblance of a screen again she would shatter it until the glass turned back into sand and pick apart every single wire from the motherboard as if it was torture for the computer. 

She wasn’t the best at coping with being stuck, she admits that. She often stares at Kinger and doesn’t understand how he made it this long. She wouldn’t. She knew that. She knew in her head that she had to be rescued or she’d be the next to go. She knew it and tried to live with it, but it was so hard. 

Bent over on the circus tent floor, Pomni imagined killing herself. She thought of taking a knife down her stomach and slicing her own ovaries out, dropping whatever parasite was in her onto the floor to die. She imagined putting a gun in her mouth and cocking it. She imagined starving herself until there was no more nutrition left for the fetus to take so it shriveled up inside her. 

All of these were useless. You couldn’t die in the circus- not really. Abstraction was the closest there was.

Yet, just imagining these scenarios gave her a sadistic feeling of calm.

She didn’t want to abstract and wither away in her room, she wanted to die and she wanted it to be violent.

Despite this turmoil, despite this hatred, despite her hands gripping her knees, she found the will to stand up. 

Pomni didn’t look at anyone. Her face stayed turned towards the ground as she rolled her shoulders back up. She was fixated on the black bile that had somehow come out of her. It was liquidy but didn’t move at all, didn’t seem to comply with physics at all. It just laid there in a perfect circle. 

Bubble began licking it up like a dog and Pomni decided she’d had enough. She turned to leave and felt a hand on her shoulder.

She doesn’t know why she expected it to be Jax. She doesn’t know why she hoped it was Jax. She can’t fathom what she would want from him in this moment. 

But it doesn’t matter, because it wasn’t Jax. It was Zooble. 

“Hey-“

They start, but Pomni has no interest in hearing it. She takes a deep breath and spins on her heel, holding her arms out to steady herself as she leaves the main area and works her way down the hallway. Her body is giving in to the stress and she knows she only has little time until she completely collapses. 

While Pomni throws herself onto her bed, she decides this must be her own form of hell. Her memories are so fuzzy but… what was she doing before she was transported to the circus again? Urbexing? Exploring an abandoned building when she found that stupid headset? 

Maybe she died. Maybe the computer had a surge that completely fried everything from her ears to her brain. Maybe a squatter saw her and attacked her. Maybe the police tried to arrest her for trespassing and she ran and they shot her. Maybe the floor gave out and she fell 10 feet into a concrete basement. 

That had to be it.

She almost wanted to laugh at herself for ever believing that any of this digital circus shit could have been real. Of course it made so much sense that she was just in purgatory.

And that’s why she couldn’t get out, she had treated it like it didn’t matter when it did. If this wasn’t Hell, it was her trial run. She had to prove herself here and maybe she’d get a shot at going to heaven. She had to be better, nicer, more deserving. 

This wasn’t the kind of Hell that they told her about at Bible Camp. There was no fire or satan with a whip. Not even skulls being used as furniture, which is what she had always pictured as a kid. 

Maybe this wasn’t the Christian Hell. Had she chosen the wrong religion? It was possible, after all there were thousands.

Well shit, what does she do now? She doesn’t know any prayers other than the basic Christian ones. Maybe whatever God was out there would be merciful on her regardless. She hoped They would be understanding and empathetic- surely omnipotent beings have to be? Pomni awkwardly stumbled into a kneeling position and bowed her head.

“Um, our Father who art in Heaven…” She started, whispering into the empty bedroom as if she was embarrassed by herself. Still, she continued.

“Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven.”

A loud knock interrupted her prayer and made her lose her place. She snarled. 

“Pomni?” 

Jax’s voice wafted in from the other side of the door.

Pomni wondered about his place in all of this. Was he also stuck in purgatory and being tested? Was he a demon who just came with the territory, or was he created specifically to try and tempt her into evil? Was she destined to Hell after allowing him to show her a crueler path?

A pair of keys jangled and the door was thrown open. Jax stood on the other end, obviously unhappy with being ignored. Pomni instinctively scooted away from him until her back was pressed hard against the wall. Her eyes narrowed at him.

“They warned me the devil would be handsome.”

Jax blanked, closing his mouth and forgetting what he was going to say.

 “What?”

Pomni turned away, nose up and pointedly ignoring him while she resumed her position at the edge of her bed. 

“Give us this day our daily bread…”

“Pomni.”

“… and forgive our trespasses...”

“Caine can’t do this.”

“… as we forgive those who trespass against us.” 

“Pomni-!”

Jax grabbed her and forced her to look at him. It was different from the times he had grabbed her before when they had fought or when they were just irritating each other. His gloves made grooves into her skin.

“You’re hurting me.” 

Jax pulled away immediately as if he had been burned. 

 “Sorry… sorry.” He wrung his hands out before bringing them up to his face. He pulled his ears downward in a way that couldn’t be comfortable. 

“Listen.” He spoke slowly as if he was testing the words in his mouth. “Caine can’t do this. He’s… he’s defective. He’s stupid. He’s not even real.”

Jax moved slowly around her, circling carefully like she’s a feral animal that could attack at any moment. 

“You know how he feels about NPCs. They’re a pain for him to keep running, he makes them idle as quickly as possible. Hell, he hasn’t even been making any of them recently. I haven’t seen any of the older models in weeks, and the last new one was Gumigoo- which was months ago.”

Pomni took a deep breath and gripped her hands into the locks of hair that hung by her face. 

“Do you think it’ll be an NPC?”

Jax jumped at the question. He paled for a single moment before bursting into laughter. 

“Of course it would be an NPC! Caine’s an AI, not a floating womb.”

Pomni blushed a deep red, obviously embarrassed. Of course Jax was right, there’s no way Caine could create a human life.

Unless someone else has put the headset on and is waiting in some kind of halfway room. Maybe instead of creating a new character, some unlucky human being on the other side of the screen would be trapped in Pomni and Jax’s strange amalgamation of a newborn. Pomni shivered at the thought. To give birth to an adult she had never met in her life and having to care for it as a child. As a parasite. Something in the womb that she didn’t know existed until a few minutes ago. 

But what about her clothes now being able to loosen in parts? What about the looming threat of nudity and the genitalia that comes with it? If she were to have sex in the circus, or be assaulted, would there be any way that a human pregnancy could result from that? Of course not, there was no explanation, none of them were even in a room together IRL. But nothing she told herself seemed to quell that paranoia. She felt her heartbeat speed up with a sick, gnawing anxiety. 

She took another deep breath. “Can you take your clothes off?”

“WHAT?” Jax froze so quickly you would think he had been tazed. 

“No, like,” Pomni bit her lip, fiddling with her hands as she tried to get the room to stop spinning enough to let her think. “… physically, is it possible for you?”

His pupils resumed their normal shape and Jax let out an audibly staggered breath. “Oh. Huh.” 

He slipped his hands under his overalls and pulled the straps outwards. They were flexible and bent as far as he was able to make them, but the top piece stayed glued to his chest like it was sewn into him. 

“Nope.” He popped the “p” sound aggressively. “Guess not.” 

Pomni’s shoulders relaxed. The room became clearer. 

She giggled. It was small at first, barely a whisper of a noise but it slowly built up as Jax stood staring. Pomni giggled and then chortled and then laughed until the sounds became more akin to screaming than anything else. Still sitting back on her knees she buried her face into her comforter set, sobs now wracking her small body. 

Jax was at an impasse. He didn’t know how to handle something like this, he hadn’t known how to handle even the basic upset emotions she had shown when he first came in. Come to think of it, he didn’t know why he had unlocked her door in the first place. He didn’t have any idea of what to say nor did he have a plan, he just wanted to see if she was okay.

And she wasn’t. She obviously wasn’t and he was just standing in the corner of her room like a jackass. He had no backup plan. No escape route. He sucked on his teeth as his stomach continued to drop.

At this rate she was going to abstract and he will have done nothing but watch it happen. Just like with Kaufmo. Just like with Ribbit. 

He needed to reach out. He needed to touch her before she disappeared forever, before the floor opened up and swallowed both of them whole. But it was like he was glued to his stupid fucking spot in the corner. 

“Pomni-“

Whatever he was going to say was interrupted by a knock at the door. Jax had never been so grateful in his life to hear Ragatha’s voice. He didn’t wait for Pomni to react before opening the door. 

“Hey-“

Her smile dropped significantly when she locked eyes with Jax. She opened her mouth for a moment before deciding against whatever she was going to say and instead dropping eye contact. She scanned the room until she took in the sight of Pomni drooping over the edge of the bed. The jester raised her head slightly to look over at the newest addition in her room. She didn’t even attempt to wipe the tear stains from under her unfocused eyes. 

Ragatha scowled.

“What did you do to her?!” 

She scream-whispered in that tone that parents take on when they don’t want their kids to know they’re fighting. Jax recoiled. 

“I didn’t do anything to her!” 

He whispered back, nudging her away from him. Ragatha made a small “hmph” and stuck her nose in the air before turning to Pomni with an over-the-top sweet smile. 

“I brought you something to eat!” She said it in this sing-song way that couldn’t be faker if she tried. Pomni groaned and eyed the plate but didn’t get up. 

Ragatha bit her lip.

“Usually I don’t like the idea of people eating in bed, but we can make an exception for you on account of the circumstances.”

Pomni stirred slightly, her focus seeming to even out. She swallowed. Ragatha took it as a good sign and stepped towards her, bending at the waist to reach her level.

“What circumstances?” 

She felt something hot bubbling up in her chest. It wasn’t the cozy feeling you would usually associate with heat in your chest, it was hot. Boiling. It was pure anger and frustration. 

“That I’m eating for two?” 

Pomni slapped the plate out of Ragatha’s hands and watched the food bounce against the rug before glitching out of existence. 

Ragatha stumbled over herself, hands out in a surrender. “N-no that’s not-“

Pomni was being cruel. She knew she was, she knew that Ragatha was just acting as a concerned friend, but she couldn’t seem to stop the vitriol that leaked into her veins. 

She loved Ragatha. 

Of course there were times when she frustrated her, Pomni was never the type of person to coddle people-pleasers, but still. They were friends. Are friends. So why was she acting like this?

Somehow being aware of the unfairness of her actions only made them worse. Knowing she was out of line in her outburst only fanned the flames that were growing inside her body. 

Jax had written the book on casual cruelty, and even he seemed shocked. He stood with his mouth half open, eyes wide and turned towards Ragatha in a way that Pomni had never seen him look before. 

She didn’t want to be pitied. She refused to be pitied. She’d rather be hated than looked at with those sorrowful little eyes and she’d rather be dead than be a sad little archetype of a mother. 

None of them were stupid, all of them knew what pregnancy traditionally entailed. How people would look down at expectant mothers or sneer disdainfully at them all because it was now visible they had sex. The hatred, the fetishists, the misogynists, the religious.

Pregnancy seemed like such a vulnerable topic to her, especially forced pregnancy. But it shouldn’t be, right? It’s not like she endured the sexual torture of forced pregnancy, there was just a snap of some computer’s synthesized hand and boom! A fetus.

So why did it still feel so personal? So sickening and humiliating? 

She hadn’t had sex, she hadn’t been assaulted. Yet still, she felt this lack of control and complete violation of her body that was so visceral it made her dizzy. She was humiliated and bitter and for what? Over a plotline caused by Reddit stories? 

God, whatever mental stability she had left was deflating. 

She wanted to cry and kick and scream and throw the blame around. She wanted a way out, but it wasn’t as if Caine would manufacture an abortion clinic just because she said pretty please.

She couldn’t breathe. She knew she was being irrational, but that knowledge did nothing to quell it. 

“This is all your fault!” 

Ragatha flinched backwards. Her head had hit the wall before she registered that the words weren’t even aimed towards her. They were aimed towards the rabbit next to her who was getting paler by the second. 

“Me?!” He squeaked out, hand coming to his chest before pointing an index finger back at Pomni. “This is Caine’s fault and you know it!”

“Well Caine isn’t exactly a person so there’s no point in it!” 

Pomni screamed loud enough to be heard down the hall, stopping Zooble in their tracks.

“If you hadn't grabbed me-!”

“You make it sound like we actually did anything!” Jax shouted back, redder than she had ever seen him. “All I did was help you up and this is the f&@$king thanks I get?!”

Ragatha tightened her jaw, unable to place where in this argument she stood or if she should be watching it happen at all. 

Another knock. Third time’s the charm.

“Hey-“

Zooble never even got to finish their question. 

“OUT!” Pomni screamed. Her voice was completely raw, cracking and screeching like a half-murdered animal. “EVERYBODY OUT NOW!”

You didn’t have to tell them twice. In a second, they were both gone and Zooble’s pieces were strewn on the ground- an unfortunate casualty of Ragatha and Jax practicing climbing over each other to get out. 

The next day came and went without a word or a sight from Pomni. 

No one went out of their way to bother her or to even chance knocking on her door. But they all seemed to slow down just a little when they passed by her door as if they were hoping she might come out this time. 

The adventure for the day was bland, meaningless, and half-baked. 

Zooble participated in this one, now fearing what Caine could do to them or to the circus if they didn’t comply.

Or what he could do to Pomni.

The day’s adventure started out with the crew on a ranch with some disembodied voices that were obviously meant for NPCs that were just never rendered. It looked straight out of one of those cheesy horse girl movies- where a storm stuck a wild horse in the middle of nowhere and the mud trapped it. 

“I’m still in awe of how Caine is able to create scents.”  

Gangle’s compliment was backhanded, the horse’s breath against her face made her feel nauseous. She was grateful she wasn’t Jax, though, who was stuck at the tail end. 

“I’m surprised he added that in, considering he couldn’t even give enough of a fuck to give us any backstory characters.”

The cursing from Zooble slipped through the censor, further revealing just how broken the rules of the original digital circus had become and how much Caine seemed to not care. 

“Less yapping, more pulling!” 

Jax whined from the horse’s ass, his shoulder pressed against it’s tailbone in hopes of pushing it out. 

Kinger was in the best position of this scenario- with his hands wrapped around the rope from solid land. Zooble was about half a yard away from him, shin deep in the mud with their hands also on the rope. Gangle held onto the rope wrapped around the horse’s neck and kept it steady, while Jax and Ragatha pushed from behind. 

After a good deal of frustrated straining, a wet popping sound finally alerted the crew that the hooves were out of the muck and the animal was trekking onwards. 

Once everyone was out of the mud and covered in sweat, a voice appeared.

“Thjanks you so mych fojr everytfhdbdh23…….!”

The voice of a small girl sputtered out nonsensical gibberish before disappearing just as soon as it came- with no body to accompany it. 

The group just stared at each other for a moment and Kinger broke the silence with a late reaction, screaming. 

For an adventure that was so short, everyone was completely exhausted by the time they were transported back to the circus. They barely waved to each other before trudging off to their respective rooms. 

All but one.

Gangle lingered, trying her best to look inconspicuous by leaning on the corner and doodling in her sketchbook. She wasn’t really making anything but chicken scratch and loop-de-loops, but it worked nonetheless. Zooble raised an eyebrow passing her but didn’t say anything and Jax made a half-hearted attempt to see what she was drawing. 

All in all, the main room and hallway had completely cleared out in just a few minutes. 

She was anxious. She couldn’t believe how uncomfortable the entire situation made her feel considering she wasn’t even the victim- Pomni was. Gangle spent hours staying up and wishing she could do something. She put herself in Pomni’s shoes and tried to force herself into her brain only to burn out and get frustrated. She felt like she might go crazy trying to wrap her head around what Pomni could possibly be feeling right now. 

She wanted to reach out, but Pomni seemed pretty dead set on not being around anyone and most likely wasn’t concerned about pleasant small talk. 

Still, Gangle had to swallow her overthinking and try. A quick word was the only idea she had and she’d never forgive herself if she didn’t try. 

“Pomni?”

She knocked on the door. It was a quiet sound, much more muffled than anyone else’s knocks because of her ribbons. God she hated that this was the body she was stuck with.

To her surprise, there was an answer. 

“…Come in.” 

Pomni’s voice sounded small- as if it was a million miles away. It was a sad, defeated sound. A sound that Gangle wasn’t ready to hear and definitely wasn’t ready to deal with. She honestly hadn’t even expected to be answered, much less invited in.

“Okay.”

Her voice matched Pomni’s tone of uncertainty, but she knew she couldn’t turn on her heel and hide now.

So she opened the door.

God.

Whatever timescale Caine was using for this pregnancy, it certainly wasn’t realistic. Pomni’s stomach jutted out a little more than usual. It wasn’t enough where you couldn’t tell if you weren’t looking for it, but still way too early for her to be showing at all. 

The fact that Pomni was on her knees and bent over her bed like she’d been praying also accentuated the bump from Gangle’s side view. 

“Hey…”

She tried shyly before absentmindedly sitting next to Pomni. She chose to cross her legs instead of sit on her knees and for a moment, if she closed her eyes, she could pretend they were just two girls whispering and giggling across from each other at a sleepover. 

But she had to open her eyes at some point, and the sight of Pomni’s big, empty eyes ruined the illusion. She just stared as the silence suffocated them. 

“Tell me a secret.”

Pomni didn’t ask, she demanded. Hand gripping her hair to keep her face upright, she repeated herself even though Gangle had heard her the first time.

“Ummm…” 

Gangle trailed off, biting her lip and somehow causing hairline cracks along her mask. Of course. 

“Well, when I was upset I used to make these little paper mache dolls of everyone and line them up and make them pretend they were my best friends and fight over who loved me the most.”

Pomni blinked. 

“What? No, that’s stupid. I mean like- something from before you came here. Something from your real life. Something I would never think of.”

She paused again, head turning fully towards Gangle. She leaned in like she was studying every centimeter of the white glassy mask before sitting back on her heels.

“Convince me you’re a real person.” 

“Oh! Uh-“

Convince her that she’s a real person? Is she a real person? Is Pomni a real person? It made her feel a little comforted to know that she wasn’t the only person doubting the validity of this computer game they were supposedly stuck in- or its characters. However, Gangle had never questioned if she herself was real, only the others. Now that the tables were turned on her, she felt like she couldn’t even be sure that she was a human. 

God, this got existential fast. Literally anyone else would be better at this than her. 

“I, uh, ripped my pants on stage during my college’s production of Fiddler on the Roof.”

Pomni snorted. “That’s it, that’s your big secret? Your one big trauma in life?”

Gangle opened her mouth to defend herself but was cut off by Pomni’s giggling. It wasn’t the tinkling laughter she was used to, this sound was grimmer… mean, even. Of course that wasn’t the worst thing that had ever happened to her but it was still a secret, right?

“Did it help at least?” 

The laughter faded into a hum and Pomni smiled. Genuinely. It felt like a weight was lifted. 

“Yeah.” Pomni turned her head away, laying it on her comforter like a tired puppy. “I don’t think I could have come up with that. So I think you’re probably real.”

Jax couldn’t stop thinking about her. 

This was bad. 

Since Pomni had joined the circus, he could count on one hand the times they had been apart for more than a few hours. It wasn’t like he was stalking her or anything, that’s just how it was. Self-isolation ran the higher risk of abstraction, so it was natural for them all to group together.

Before all of this had happened, Zooble was the one he was keeping a wary eye on. They seemed fairly stable and grounded, but their insistence on not going on any of the adventures was suspicious to him. He couldn’t figure them out. 

Of course, now that they were following Caine’s orders out of fear, his full attention was on Pomni. 

The last time he had seen her was two days ago, when she had screamed that her condition was his fault. And maybe it was.

Caine had told them all before that he couldn’t get inside their brains. That he couldn’t read their minds, but honestly Jax didn’t know how much he trusted that anymore.

He liked Pomni. Likes Pomni.

He had kind of suspected it for a while but he thought it was just because something about her felt so familiar to him. Like something of a home. But the night before the Tetris adventure where Caine poofed a living thing inside her, Jax had been coming to terms with his feelings. 

He’d had a dream about them that night, him and Pomni. A dream that they were somehow saved and made it out of the circus together. He could almost remember what she looked like, and what he looked like for that matter. Details of his real self that he’d forgotten. And they’d been free. 

And when he woke up, he realized he was hopelessly infatuated with her. 

When he had held her hand a little too long after helping her onto the platform, it wasn’t an accident. It was intentional. He wanted to be near her and to have some kind of physical tie to her. 

Maybe it was a coincidence, maybe it would have happened regardless. But he can’t shake the thought that Caine knew. That Caine had peered into his skull and figured him out. 

In which case, Pomni would be right. It would be his fault. Because he took a second to be selfish she was in this position. 

She ate at his every thought. He missed her, but more than anything he was worried about her. Scared for her. 

She had screamed at him and then completely iced everyone out for 2 days. Who knows what she was doing in her room alone, he knew from experience it wasn’t exactly the most entertaining thing in the circus to lay in bed all day.

He’d try to talk to her tonight. 

… Maybe he’d bring someone along for backup. Just in case she got agitated again. 

Jax was so lost in his thoughts while walking to the common area that he completely missed Gangle and stumbled into her. Her comedy mask singled for a moment before ultimately falling and shattering onto the linoleum.

“Sorry.” Jax muttered at the soft cry, maneuvering around her. 

“…What?” Gangle sounded genuinely surprised. 

Jax lifted his head to see everyone staring at him. It struck him that he usually wouldn’t apologize for breaking Gangle’s mask. He felt the knee-jerk urge to laugh in her face but really couldn’t manage the energy so he opted to just roll his eyes and walk in the opposite direction.

“Not so fast, you!” 

Caine looked… nauseating at best. His head of teeth had become slightly unhinged, as if the imaginary jaw it was connected to had been broken. Everything about him drooped and his eyes glitched in and out of his body. There was nothing bloody or graphic, but computer gore wasn’t exactly comforting in this situation either. A feeling of unease settled over all of them. 

Caine pointed at Jax and it felt like everyone held their breath in anticipation. 

“You have a different adventure!”

Jax swallowed. He had been an ass for his entire time here, sure, but he silently prayed that Caine had a little bit of mercy. The knowledge that he could twist and turn and do whatever he wanted to their bodies had kept everyone on their toes. Being singled out was the last thing any of them wanted right now, but here he was- enduring it.

“As a father-to-be, you need to know the ins and outs of childcare! Which means today, you’ll be the sole employee of a failing nursery! Good luck!”

“Wait, but-“

Jax didn’t have a second to protest. In a quick flash of wind and light, he heard the screams of hungry infants. 

Great. Perfect, actually. Exactly what he needed. He groaned, but with no one else around there was nobody there to perform for. Nobody to torment other than some NPC babies- and even he wasn’t that cruel. 

So he refined himself to this adventure and playing it correctly. 

The room he was in was relatively large, with three walls lined with single cribs spaced out about a foot apart. The floor was covered by foam playmats that were colorful and covered in numbers and letters. On top of the foam were soft toys and bouncers strewn around haphazardly.

The fourth wall was the one directly behind him. While it wasn’t lined with cribs, it had a rocking chair and cabinets filled with formula next to a diaper changing area. 

He muttered to himself as soon as he saw it. Was it really necessary to add pissing themselves to what they could do? It’s not like anyone in the digital circus really needed to eat, and therefore they didn’t need to excrete any kind of waste. Sure, there were bathrooms scattered around the circus, but that was only for realism purposes. Nobody actually used them for anything other than dunking each other’s heads in or gossiping.

Would he have to change Pomni’s baby when it was born? 

Well, their baby.

He felt like he couldn’t breathe. Jax quickly shook the thought out of his head. He didn’t know why he was worrying about something like that, it’s not like that thing would be around very much anyways. Caine would be bored of this weird little pregnancy arc soon and everything would be back to normal. 

God, he hated Caine. 

Speaking of which, wasn’t this whole arc supposed to be about bringing interpersonal drama to the circus? For everyone? So why was he the only one here left alone with a dozen fussy babies?

Something wet hit him right between the eyes and slid down his face until it hit the floor with a small splat sound. Jax glanced at his feet and realized someone had thrown their spit-soaked pacifier at him. He exhaled roughly before bending over and throwing the piece of plastic into the sink. 

His attempt to mix formula didn’t go as smooth as he hoped it would, the sweet-scented powder absolutely coated his overalls and chafed his fur. 

He figured to himself that he deserved this while screwing the top on his first successful bottle. He dropped it into the bottle warmer and held his face in his hands. 

This is what he gets for wanting to be close to someone. This is what he gets for wanting, period. 

If anyone else came to him with concerns about Caine being able to read their minds, he would laugh in their face and call them paranoid. 

But when he’s alone he can’t seem to shake the feeling that what happened to Pomni was his fault. 

He snatched the bottle with one hand and used the other to pick up the first baby he saw, flopping himself down onto the rocking chair and holding it to their mouth. 

The baby cooed and calmed down just for a moment before screeching with a new vigor. 

“What- ow! Too hot, too hot!”

Jax dropped the bottle onto the floor, the plastic burning from being left in the warmer for too long. He picked it up and shook it around with his free hand, hoping to cool it down.

“Sorry, sorry.”

He sat back down and rocked while waiting for it to cool but the movement did very little to stifle the cries of the child tucked into his arm.

Shit.

Pomni should be here with him.

Not only was it incredibly unfair to be dealing with this on his own, but he missed her. And worried about her. He wanted to say that he couldn’t wait for this to all be over so he could see her again, but it wasn’t the truth. 

He wasn’t looking forward to seeing her again, not really. He needed to see that she was okay and wanted to talk her down from whatever ledge he suspected she was on but he still felt so severely out of his element that he couldn’t even tie enough words together to practice what he would say to her. 

He wanted to see her but he was scared to know if she wanted to see him or not. 

Jax squeezed some of the milk onto his wrist, testing it. Slightly above room temperature. He settled back down and popped it into the baby’s mouth. 

Glancing around the room, he realized all of them were in little onesies that were either pink or blue. 

Genders, he assumed. 

The pink-adorned NPC settled into his lap after a slight adjustment and drank happily. Her eyes fluttered open and shut and it was obvious she was exhausted. 

Good, something they had in common.

Once the bottle was empty he flipped her upside down and patted her back. His aunt had once told him it was the fastest way to burp a baby, and he was in too much of a time crunch to test it. She burped almost immediately and he put her back into her crib, where she rolled over and closed her eyes immediately.

One down. 

The next batch went fairly quicker. Jax discovered a beat up cd player under a pile of baby formula cans and diapers and was able to get a few lullabies playing to fill the room with something other than crying.

Once he realized they were all pretty much big enough to hold their own bottles he was able to support two of them at once, one in each arm while he rocked them. 

The bottle warmer was the trickiest part, it never seemed consistent enough for him to not have to check each and every bottle made.

Despite that, after what felt like hours all of the kids were fed, changed, and asleep. 

When he felt the telling air of one of Caine’s portals emerging he almost felt sad to see them go. Not sad enough to keep him away from going back to the circus, though. 

God, he was exhausted. 

The others seemed to have had fun in their adventure as they sat around and laughed about something he couldn’t hear. Not like he would understand it anyways- it was probably an inside joke.

What he wouldn’t give to be on the inside.

He wanted to grab Ragatha and make her come with him to see Pomni so he wouldn’t be alone, but breaching the couch felt like popping a bubble of whatever little perfect world they were all in for the moment.

So he didn’t. 

He felt like he could just fall to the floor and pass out at any moment. His ears were droopy and he felt like he’d have to take pliers to his eyelids to keep them open.

He wondered if Pomni would let him sleep in her room.

No.

He shook the thought out of his head immediately. He didn’t want Caine to get the wrong idea. 

“Heyyyy Pom-Pom, you miss me?”

It was forced but he was sure she couldn’t tell. His big grin stayed plastered to his face as he waited for a reply that didn’t come.

Hm.

“Pomniiiii~”

He sang her name in the most irritating manner he could muster, knocking on the door loudly. Still no answer. 

Fine. Whatever. That’s no big deal.

He sucked his teeth and dug in his pockets. There’s really no point in anyone hiding in their rooms since he had all the keys anyways.

He pulled out the comically large keyring from his small overall pocket and started ticking them off. Zooble’s key, Ragatha’s key, Gangle, Kinger, that one room, the other room, the kitchen…

… huh. No key to Pomni’s room. As a matter of fact, he couldn’t find the key to his own bedroom either. 

Well that’s just peachy, isn’t it? 

He didn’t like that. The idea of someone else being able to get into his private space made his entire body itch. 

He wanted to tear the circus apart piece by piece until he found them, but he was so tired. He was sure the keys had just fallen off in one of his little hiding spaces. It wasn’t like the others knew much about those or ventured into them often, it’d be fine.

He could focus on it in the morning. 

Jax stirred as he woke up, becoming increasingly aware of the shadow looming over him.

“What the fuck?!”

His screech was so loud it could have broken glass but the person across from him seemed completely unaffected.

Pomni stood there with his key in her hand, the door still partially ajar.

The light spilling in from the hallway highlighted just how gruesome she looked. Jax sucked in a panicked breath. He was getting ready to tell her off but his mouth just opened silently while he took in her appearance.

She was paler than normal, something he didn’t think was possible. Her skin had a sickly blue undertone as if she was becoming transparent, and her edges were rougher than usual. Her noodle-like arms were even thinner which only accentuated her growing stomach. 

It made sense, kind of. Caine didn’t know the first thing about pregnancy or trimesters. Not to mention his glaring impatience.

Still, Jax thought it would take more than a few days. 

He couldn’t prove it, but it looked as if Pomni had been crying. She looked as though this thing inside her was eating her alive.

The air was so thick he thought he could choke on it. She just stood over the edge of his bed staring daggers at him as if there was something torturous on her mind.

“Hey…”

Whatever lame ass sarcastic comment he had to lighten the mood died in his throat. For what felt like the hundredth time in the past week, Jax was speechless. 

It didn’t suit him. 

Pomni closed the gap marginally, getting only a few inches away from his face. Closer up, he could see the inflamed capillaries in her eyes and the cracks on her lips. She disgusted him. He had never wanted to kiss her more in his life. 

“If I abstracted, how would you remember me?”

The question took him completely by surprise in a way that forced the air out of his chest. He didn't understand where this was coming from at all- the entire time since he’d opened his eyes felt like a fever dream.

“Wh-at?”He squeaked out, voice cracking in a way that would usually throw him into an embarrassed rage but now just left him numb 

“If I abstracted, would you remember me like this? Or would you remember me in the way things were before this? Would you remember how we used to laugh together, or how revoltingly sunken my skin is now?”

Everything she said was so charged, but she said it with a blank face as if they were just lines she’d practiced a million times. 

Jax coughed and gave him a second to gain his composure. His slick smile spread across his face despite his brain churning to process, almost as if the expression had a mind of its own. 

“Bold of you to assume that-“

“That you’d remember me?” She almost laughed. Pomni gripped his shoulders hard enough to leave little half-moon crescents in his skin. 

“You don’t fool me. You haven’t fooled me in a long, long time.” She let him go, his head falling against his pillows before she stepped back. “Answer the question.”

Jax felt his face heating up in humiliation. In all the years he had spent in this digital hellhole, nobody had ever spoken to him like that. Ordered him to speak like he was a dog doing a fucking party trick. 

“What does it matter?” He snickered, sitting up so he was taller than her. 

“I don’t know what you’re expecting.” He continued as if it was a casual conversation about the weather. “If I tell you I’ll remember you as some sickly and frail creature, will that stop you from abstracting? You’ll stay here out of spite?”

Pomni opened her mouth to speak but he didn’t let her.

“Or I can sit here and say I’ll remember you fondly- that you’ll come to me as a soft rose petal on a swan’s feathered ass. And you’ll be- what? Satisfied with that? Content in commuting the closest thing to suicide here?”

“I…” Pomni stuttered, stumbling over words that refused to come out. She seemed almost shocked that he had fought back, which only pissed him off more.

“I don’t know.” She finally answered, deflating. “I just wanted to know the answer.”

“Well I won’t give you the satisfaction.”

She came to him for help, she sought him out specifically. He knew she was struggling with all of this and he still refused to give her the littlest thing she wanted. Why? Why the hell was he like this?

“Fine.”

She tensed, spitting the word through her teeth before turning around. 

“Give me my keys back.” 

Jax came to his senses, realizing she must have had them the whole time.

She spun on her heel just to grin in his face before leaving. She made sure to quote him on the way out.

“I won’t give you the satisfaction.”

Another day, another adventure. 

Jax really needed a distraction after last night. Pomni’s face haunted him almost as much as the things he had said to her. 

But this was for the best. Avoid her so Caine won’t target her again. Or something like that. 

Of course it didn’t hurt if he told himself he was avoiding her for some noble cause instead of admitting he was worried about her. 

“Goood morning my crabby crustaceans!”

Caine’s voice brought him out of his trance, the exaggerated enthusiasm already grinding his nerves. At least he looked much more… put together than yesterday. His eyes were in the correct place, if nothing else.

“Where’s Pomni?”

The world seemed to stand still as he scanned the group and Jax felt his eye twitch. Of course Caine wouldn’t even remember.

“She’s, uh, a little… preoccupied.” Gangle tried, twirling her thumbs and staring at the floor. 

“She’s a little pregnant!” Kinger blurted out. Everyone whipped around to stare at him like he had said the most offensive thing in the world, but their tiptoeing around the topic hadn’t done anyone any favors. 

“Oh, yeah!” Caine said while slapping himself in disbelief. “I completely forgot about that!” 

Jax and Zooble shared a glance while they groaned. Of course he had.

“Well, I can fix that!”

Fix-?

With a snap of his fingers, Pomni was summoned to the room. She looked even worse than the night before. Eyes sullen, skin slick, she looked like she was dying.

Ragatha covered her mouth in her hands to try and hide her shock, Gangle’s mask spontaneously combust, and even Jax- who had just seen her- was sick to his stomach at the sight. 

Pomni struggled against Caine’s magical hold to no use. Sighing, she sagged in the air. Her body looked completely boneless, limp in a way that implied she had completely given up. 

“Ohhhhh, Nurse Bubble-!”

Caine whistled, calling dramatically as a gurney appeared. Caine made a small motion with his hands, throwing her onto it recklessly. She bounced once against it, the stillness of her body reminding everyone of a corpse. 

Bubble made an appearance in what looked to be a badly-made sexy nurse costume, complete with a syringe of glittery liquid he held in his mouth. He pushed the needle into Pomni’s arm without warning. She barely flinched, instead stiffening with gritted teeth until the syringe was empty.

“Okay, now push!” He instructed with that slightly giddy tone that always drove everyone insane.

Pomni shot up as if she had been shocked back to life. “Push from where?!” She cried out and palmed at her clothes to make sure they were still stuck on. 

Every person on the sidelines knew they shouldn’t be watching this. Kinger, Zooble, Ragatha, and Jax all stood feet planted on the ground. If anyone ever asked, they’d defend themselves- saying they wanted to be there for Pomni in her time of vulnerable need. But deep down, they all knew that wasn’t true. They knew she didn’t want to be watched, but some sick sense of morbid curiosity allowed them to push her feelings to the back of their minds.

The only person who held onto any standing or morality was Gangle, who silently excused herself to slink back down the hallway into her bedroom. 

“Um…” Bubble continued, looking to Caine. “Anywhere!”

Pomni looked so helpless and lost. More than anything, though, she looked desperate. Desperate to get this thing out of her. She took a deep breath and pushed everything that she could push. She clenched her body with such a force that her ears popped and she could hear her blood moving inside her head. It was nauseating. She’d never felt so disgusted with herself or so publicly humiliated in her life. Her eyes stung with tears but she chalked it up to the bodily strain. 

Just as quickly as everything had happened, it was over. 

There was a stomach-churning pop, and just like that Pomni’s womb was empty and her arms were full of something squirming in a little pink blanket. Jax immediately recognized it as the same blanket the little girls had in the nursery.

The world seemed to stop. Everyone strained their necks to get a better view of the new baby, not daring to move closer and break the silence of the moment. It felt like the dam of normality might break if anyone even breathed. 

Jax was the first to break it as he stumbled over to Pomni’s side. Kinger followed immediately afterwards, with Zooble and Ragatha trailing behind. 

Without a second thought, Kinger whisked the baby out of Pomni’s arms and held her up for everyone to see. 

She was small, but too big to really look like a newborn. She also wasn’t coated in the usual amniotic fluid you would associate with something just born. 

Her avatar was a little stuffed rabbit, but modeled after one much more vintage than what most of them had grown up with. She looked like she belonged on the nightstand in a painting from the 1910s. Her face was painted with impossibly red cheeks and black diamonds under her eyes in a true jester fashion. She wore a little blue overall dress with a yellow pocket, but it was too short and poofy to really cover anything past her waist, so a pair of frilly white bloomers kept her bottom covered. 

She was the most precious thing Jax had ever seen since he’d been trapped in this hellhole.

Kinger bounced her in the air, throwing her higher and higher each time before catching her. She seemed confused at first but eventually started letting out giggles that turned into full-blown laughter. Kinger matched her enthusiasm, spinning her around until he was dizzy. 

“You’re good with kids.” Zooble mentioned offhandedly as they watched.

“I’d hope so.” Kinger answered. They all waited for him to elaborate and say whether or not he’d had children before he came to the circus, but he didn’t.

“O-kay…” Ragatha stuttered, holding out her hands to take the baby away from Kinger. “Maybe we should let Pomni hold her…”

“Get that thing away from me.” Pomni answered without a half second of hesitation. “I’m tired.” The words were blunt and matter-of-fact and she said them as if they explained everything before she rolled over and closed her eyes. 

Ragatha pouted before forcing a smile and stepping closer. “Don’t you at least want to help us name her.” 

“No.”

That was that, then. Not even the reset of her character and the reversion back to her old body could change the shift in her outlook that had bleakened considerably in the last week. 

“I’ll take her to her room.”

Jax offered. He sidestepped out of the little circle that was forming and grabbed the handles of her gurney, maneuvering it awkwardly around the other three. Ragatha opened her mouth and he answered before she could even ask.

“Name her whatever.”

And he was off, wheeling Pomni down the hallway. 

It’s a sad day for a child whose parents won’t stick around long enough to even give them a name. 

Cecily is what they had all decided on, after Cecily Parsley- one of the rabbits from the old Beatrix Potter nursery rhymes. 

It was a pretty name, Pomni thought, for something that was created in such a horrible way.

Gangle had been the main one to come up with it, she had always loved names and naming her little characters in her stories that she thought no one knew about. 

Cecily had taken a liking to Gangle and loved to pull and bite on her ribbons. It reminded her of the way Jax would bully her, but she didn’t mind it when it came from the baby. 

At some point during the night Pomni was forced awake by the knocking of Ragatha on her bedroom door. She had been half delirious when she answered and didn’t have time to ask what was the matter before Ragatha pawned Cecily over into Pomni’s hands. Right. She had almost forgotten. She had almost been able to pretend that a complete loss of her bodily autonomy was something other than a really long nightmare. 

“Cecily needs some mommy-daughter bonding time!” Ragatha explained with an overly-friendly smile and we voice pitched higher than usual. Before Pomni could even blink, she was already halfway down the opposite end of the hallway.

Pomni never really noticed how close Jax’s room was before. Or maybe it just felt closer now than usual. He was right there, right across from her with his stupid character icon smiling at her. It felt more mocking now, somehow. 

Why had Ragatha woken Pomni up specifically to hand Cecily over to her? She knew Ragatha had some kind of mommy issues, but even then- why wake up Pomni when there was a perfectly capable other parent who could handle her. Why was daddy-daughter time suddenly not important? 

It wasn’t fair. 

Pomni needed to gather her thoughts.

She set Cecily down in the crib that had materialized at some point during the day and sat cross-legged on the floor across from her.

This made no sense. 

Caine hated keeping NPCs running, so why have this one on all day every day? What caused the sudden change of mind? 

Cecily sat up and babbled, her arms reaching out of the crib bars in hopes of Pomni’s attention. But Pomni remained stonefaced and unamused. 

“Who are you?”

She finally asked, letting the baby wrap her hand around one of her gloved fingers. Pomni still wasn’t convinced that Cecily was an NPC. She could be a grown man trapped in a newborn’s body and forced to communicate in nothing but babbles and screams. 

Or maybe a grown man who had been regressed mentally, his brain turned to mush and completely reformed as soon as he put on that headset. She felt her breath catch in her throat at the thought of it.

Could Caine do that?

She didn’t know anymore. She couldn’t tell what Caine could and couldn’t do, for all she knew he was God himself. Maybe he was reading her mind right now and imagining a way to punish her for her lack of faith and religious blasphemy.  Maybe he had made her the next Virgin Mary, his favorite little sacrificial lamb.

There was no way to get away from Caine in the circus. No way to hide from him or to trick him- even if she went into the void he would find her and bring her back. 

It hurt to swallow. Pomni couldn’t breathe. 

Cecily, noticing her mother’s distress, began to cry. She was ignored, which only made her screech more as Pomni stared at the ceiling in a corpse-like stillness. She barely even noticed the baby’s cries.

The baby.

Her baby, she corrected herself unwillingly. She struggled to even claim it in her head, she had no connection to the wailing stranger in her room giving her a headache. 

The “birth,” despite how clean, undetailed, and nondepictive it was, was still traumatic. She felt weak admitting it, but being on display for the only people in her world was gut-wrenching and disgusting. Just remembering the way she had been looked at, the way she had been stabbed full of some substance without warning, was enough to make her feel like she could vomit at any second. 

She felt nothing for this child other than distrust and suspicion. Nothing but burning pain making its way from her core to her head, pounding in her ears and making her eyesight dim around the edges. 

“Shut up!”

She finally snapped, screaming at the crib as she held her ears. “Just- just be quiet!”

Pomni stormed towards her, picking the baby up under her arms. Her frustration morphed from anger into something akin to powerlessness- weak, dependent, exposed. As she lifted Cecily out, Pomni caught a small glimpse of herself in the little plastic mirror on the floor of the toybox and felt her heart sink.

How long had she looked like this- so… sunken? So dead? When has she ever been the kind of person to hold a child in anger? 

She had known how gruesome she looked when she was still carrying Cecily, but now even after the birth, something about her was off. Something about her pixels moved in a way that was uncanny. Her eyes didn’t go back to exactly the way they had been just a few days ago. No, they were definitely duller and rougher with paranoia and… something else? 

Something moving.

Something unnatural.

While she was so focused on her face, she didn’t even process the freezing numbness crawling up her arms until the bleeding colors and shapes had already made their way to her chest.

Pomni’s abstraction wasn’t as dramatic as she imagined it would be. Maybe it was because she was still semi herself. She thought about Kaufmo and how destructive he had been when he abstracted- hunting her like an animal. Would that eventually happen to her? Is this just some sweet spot in her demise?

She hadn’t realized she was still holding Cecily until her cries became garbled and glitchy. 

She was passing her abstraction onto her. She was infecting her with it.

Through this, Pomni felt her head clear. She felt like she could see brighter and think smarter- as if a veil had been lifted from over her.

This was the best outcome for both of them. 

This was the natural end to her purgatory.

As for Cecily, this was the only way to find out what she truly was- if she was anything at all. If she was an NPC, it wouldn’t matter. Caine would snap his fingers and she’d go back to being inactive, her avatar set aside in the memory bank forever. Maybe Caine would bring her back for an adventure or two. She couldn’t tell if the others would love that or be traumatized by it.

On the other hand, if she really was a person, Pomni would be saving them. Saving them from the circus and getting them out before they ever had the chance to really realize how fucked up this place was. How fucked up it is. Whoever is behind that headset wouldn’t spend all their days getting their diaper changed and crying, they’d be-

well, Pomni actually wasn’t sure where they’d be or what abstraction was like in the end. But she was sure it was better than living in this uncertain, paranoid hell.

She has the chance to be a hero. She has the chance to make both of them free.

“I’m going to save you.” She whispered tearily, sobbing softly as she held tighter onto Cecily, cradling her into the crook of her arm.

“I’m going to save us both.”

As the darkness overtook them, Pomni felt it. The feral violence. The impulse to cause as much damage as possible. The thing that had prompted Kaufmo all those months ago.

Unlike Kaufmo, though, she never got the chance to act on it before Caine found her.

Caine, who had done this to her. Who got to live out the rest of his AI life doing the same things over and over again and would never think about her again.

Caine, who opened the floor and threw both of them into the cellar.