Chapter Text
The room smelled like stale air, the scent of carton boxes, energy drinks, dirty laundry, and dust, with the lingering scent of overheated PC processors. 489z0, whose real name was forgotten long time ago, sat curled up in a fluffy blanket on a gaming chair. Her oily and messy brown hair stuck out in different directions as if she were under a hurricane.
On her head, like a crown of an unworthy monarch, rested a bow tie like a fraeking breakfast of bacon and fried egg. On surface of this breakfast like bowtie sat a tiny bacon hair boy. Its sad little face, with tiny slit like eyes stared into emptiness, and from time it quietly sobbed; however, 489z0 was already used to ignore these squeaks.
Bright, 3D glasses with thick white temples and red-blue lenses cast a ghostly glow onto the monitor. Lines of purchases, DMs with colleagues, clients, and cameras from the most unexpected popular places places such as adopt me or 3008 flickered across the screen.
"uh... okei..." she mumbled under her breath, her voice had having thick Polish accent. It's hoarse from too much caffeine and less water.
Ideas flowed like a river.
There she was, uploading fake fedoras to the sketchy dark websites.
There she was, unleashing large pile of scam bots on [FREE ADMIN] experience
It was amusing.
It was funny.
It gave her a sense of power she had been denied in the real world, where even walking to the nearest garbage dump took five minutes, and that annoyed her to no end.
Suddenly, her scheming was interrupted by a sharp, insistent knock at the door. 489z0 froze.
The fuck?…No one ever came to her.
Delivery men feared her app rating, she had few friends, and why would she need any?
Extra trouble for no reason.
Rivals?
They preferred to operate in the digital space.
She frowned,
The tiny bacon-haired boy atop the Baklava squeaked in alarm.
"Who’s there?" she rasped, hiding neither irritation nor curiosity.
No answer.
The knocking repeated, quiet but persistent, like a woodpecker drilling into her carefully constructed chaos.
"Damn motherfucker and trolls…," she muttered, sipping a gulp of cheap energy drink.
"I swear… I’ll… I’ll flood their listings with ‘rare’ items… post their secrets… ruin their auctions…" sh clenched her teeth
She rose from her chair, which groaned under her weight, and shuffled toward the door, bare feet slapping the linoleum scattered with candy wrappers, scraps of cable, and crumpled design drafts.
Without looking through the peephole, she yanked the door open.
No one was there. Just the gray, empty landing outside.
She was about to slam it shut, muttering curses in code and keyboard shortcuts, when her blue gaze through her movie glasses fell to the floor.
At her feet sat a wicker box.
And in it, wrapped in a plain gray blanket, lay… a child.
489z0 blinked.
Slowly, with a dramatic sigh, she wiped her glasses on the hem of her oversized hoodie.
Then she looked again.
The child hadn’t disappeared.
Moreover, he was… unusual.
It's skin was pale and white, like soap or even salt, smile was creepy like from the game of "infectious smile" or whatever it called and…what?… It's head was in shape of cube rather than every regular robloxian. br />
And he whimpered softly but piercingly, clenching and unclenching tiny fists.
489z0’s mind, used to manipulating hundreds of fake UGC listings at once, stalled. The only thought she could cling to was:
“To zdecydowanie nie mój problem.That's not my ##### problem
"Ah," she muttered aloud and shut the door.
She turned, back to her monitors, and took a deep, steadying breath.
“Halucynacje. Za dużo napoju energetycznego. A może… za mało? Nieważne.”
She stepped back toward her chair, her screens, her little kingdom of digital chaos.
But then, from the other side of the door, the crying started.
Quiet at first, pitiful, then rising steadily.
It was no ordinary sound.
It assaulted her senses, a high-pitched, demanding wail that burrowed into her brain like a corrupted file.
489z0 pressed her fingers against her ears.
"Shut up!" she hissed at the box.
The crying grew louder.
Now it was a piercing, miniature siren, grating and entirely inappropriate in her chaotic lair.
She couldn’t concentrate.
Her fingers, trained for precise keystrokes, trembled.
The bowtie wobbled atop her head, and the tiny bacon-haired boy squeezed his eyes shut, terrified of falling.
"#####!" 489z0 shouted, kicking over a stack of empty energy drink cans.
She lunged for the box, face twisted with irritation and disbelief.
The door had barely closed behind her when she yanked it fully inside.
The box landed in the center of the room, beside piles of papers, sketches of maps fro the games, and scattered UGC designs. The child, realizing he was no longer exposed to cold drafts from the landing, quieted to soft, irregular whimpers.
And so they sat: the white kid in the box, and the "methedrone" of the digital world in a plate-of-desserts crown, staring at each other in the foul, cramped silence of her lair.
"So… what the hell am I supposed to do with you now?" 489z0 muttered to the void, and for the first time in weeks, her voice carried something she hadn’t felt in a long time, not mischief, but pure, animal confusion.