Archive of Our Own ^beta

"So," Jax says, breaking the silence between them. "Which one are you?"

The face in the hospital bed smiles at them. It had been odd to find a new face in the C&A building that had trapped them. Odder still that it had happened on their second visit to the site after their escape. Kinger had bought them some new equipment and had been hoping to data-mine the circus' program for clues, but that plan had been derailed very quickly once they found a body laying on the table of one of the abandoned conference rooms. The fact that the body, as skeletal as it was, seemed to be still breathing had terrified them into immediately calling 911. It was only once the EMTs arrived that Caine snapped to the front, insisting to the medics that they not take off the VR headset until an expert properly examined the machinery. Why they listened, Jax still doesn't know, but that expert had turned out to be Kinger, who had hacked into the visor and allowed it to be taken off without resulting in any permanent brain damage. They still stayed in a coma for a year after that, but, well—better that than dead.

"You first," the body says and Jax would recognize that voice even if a century had passed. Jax takes in a deep breath and leans back in her chair.

"See, that's the thing," Jax says. "It's kind of a long story."

"Just tell her," Pomni urges inside their head. "How could she not want to know it's you?"

Right. Yeah. But Jax can't help feeling suddenly self-conscious about it all, because even if Ribbit was the kind of friend who'd tell you they'd love you if you were a worm, they'd never seen Jax as a girl.

Jax resists the urge to fiddle with her skirt. Pomni had never been one for more overtly feminine clothes and even though Ribbit doesn't know that, it makes Jax feel like she's dressed like she's got something to prove. Which she doesn't. Even if Ribbit somehow had the twisted idea that being a woman was inherently biological, Jax had gotten her period enough to pass that bar, too.

"So this body," Jax begins. "It belongs to someone who joined the circus after you—left. But, uh, my original body was probably doing about as shitty as yours is now, so I kind of—hitched a ride."

Ribbit blinks, waiting patiently for the punchline.

"It's me, Frogger," Jax says. "I'm Jax."

Jax braces herself for impact. For Ribbit to blame her for everything that had happened, and scream at Jax for having been such a terrible friend, to throw their pillows at her face and demand she leave, but—

"Jax." Ribbit's gaunt face splits into a grin. "You make a cute girl."

When they first found her, they took a week off from work to stay at her bedside. Kinger had said it was unlikely they'd wake up soon, but they all knew there was no way they'd be able to focus on anything else. Pomni's parents had understood. At that point in time, her parents had still been operating under the assumption that Alice So was one person, but the fact that they'd been the one to find Ribbit—and at the same building that had held them, no less—had been enough to make it clear they felt some kind of responsibility for Ribbit's body. Aera had even asked Pomni if they wanted her to come along with them for moral support. Pomni had refused, politely. Some things were easier to handle amongst themselves.

Ribbit didn't have any ID with them, but eventually, their mom was found, and Jax learned that the name she had been born with was Roxy. It had been a strange feeling, being thanked by a tearful woman who had already assumed the worst for their child. Ribbit had been gone for years. It had felt safe for her to assume that meant the story was already over.

Kinger was the one who comforted her. He listened to her stories—how Roxy had always been such a happy child, until Roxy's mom married their stepfather, how their relationship had changed so quickly, it hadn't hit her how much had gone wrong until it was too late—and let her cry on his shoulder. By that point, Jax already had an inkling of who they'd rescued, but had been too scared to say it out loud, too afraid that mentioning her by name would cause them to get ripped apart once again.

"They're still here," Kinger had told Roxy's mom—May, because apparently, now, they were good enough friends to be on a first-name basis. "No matter what happened in the past, you can always make a better future."

Jax wishes he wouldn't say it like that.

After Jax finishes explaining their situation, she lets Ragatha take control and tries not to cringe as Ragatha throws their arms around Ribbit in a hug and bursts into sobs. Ribbit takes to this abrupt shift in emotion better than expected, patting Ragatha on the head and joking about not expecting such a warm welcome. Their coherency fades pretty soon after that, though, so Ragatha presses a kiss to their temple and promises to come back soon, then leaves a note that says pretty much the same thing. She lingers in Ribbit's room for a bit, but Ribbit just keeps staring at one of the walls, blinking with enough rhythm that Jax wonders if they know morse code. Eventually, Ragatha rubs her eyes and leaves the room, closing the door gently behind her.

"So," Zooble says. "What now?"

That was the question, wasn't it? Jax wants nothing more to sit at Ribbit's bedside until her face once again lights up in recognition, but they have responsibilities beyond that. There's work, of course. Jax cares too much about Pomni to get them fired—and of course, she enjoys spending their money on stupid drinks she used to worry was too girly for her to buy. (White girls everywhere were right. Pumpkin spiced lattes are amazing.)

There is also, of course, the other body. The one that is conveniently just down the hall from Ribbit's room, though he still hasn't woken up yet. They'd found him in the building just a little after Kinger hacked into Ribbit's headset.

There's a part of Jax that can't help but relate it all to a game, and it infuriates her that life is still like this. They shouldn't be getting gifted the bodies of their friends like some sort of twisted reward for clearing another level. Jax is starting to wonder if her joke about the building being magic wasn't actually that far off. That maybe, the reason it took so long to get out had nothing to do with circuitry at all, but was in fact because the site was some kind of hellmouth and all of the suffering they went through is how they powered the building. Or… something like that, anyway.

Jax can't forget how the building immediately revealed itself to her on her worst night. She'd been practically begging for an excuse to make a bad decision when the path had opened up to her. Maybe if she'd been in her right mind, she would have been suspicious of that. Or maybe it's just that now that she's left, she's looking for an excuse not to have been responsible for her own torment. Or a reason why C&A still hasn't torn the building down, even with all the bad press it's been getting—though Ribbit's hospitalization had been less publicized than her own.

"I don't want to drive back home," Jax says. The trip to the hospital had taken two hours. Pomni had driven the whole time, because the rest of them were too filled with nervous energy to focus on the road.

"We can stay the night," Pomni offers. Ribbit had the good manners to wake up on a Friday night. May had called them the morning after with the good news, and they left immediately. It's only now that they're back in the hospital waiting room do they register how impulsive this had been. Ribbit would have been fine if they had left her for a day. It's not like they could have walked out on their own.

"I don't mind," Zooble says. "We can try and find Ribbit a book or something before we visit tomorrow. Give them something to do with all the free time they have now."

Yeah, that could work. Jax pulls out their phone to search for the nearest bookstore, feeling like a terrible friend for not knowing instinctively for what kind of book they'd like.

"Pick something that you loved," Kinger suggests. "I'm sure she'll want a chance to get to know the real you."

Right. The "real" Jax. Like she's supposed to know who that is. So much of her has changed since they've started living like this, Jax is scared that if she opens up too much, Ribbit won't recognize the girl she's turned into, though part of that is because Jax actually thinks about what she'll do a month from now instead of blindly stumbling into the future.

"Same motel as last time?" Jax asks, instead of bothering with a reply.

"Can we go somewhere that serves breakfast?" Caine asks hopefully. He'd just learned about continental breakfasts and, apparently, had gotten it in his head that he needed to try one. Jax rolls her eyes, but she doesn't argue. It's kind of nice to share a brain with someone who gets stupidly excited about little things like that, even if it is Caine.

"I'll see if there's a cheap one nearby," Jax tells him.

Jax buys Ribbit a copy of The Tale of Despereaux because Jax knows Ribbit's mind must still be muddy from the coma and everything else that's wrong with her, and because it had been one of her favorite books as a child. The plot strikes them as painfully relevant as she leaves the store. Jax would be the kind of ruler who banned people from eating soup because her wife died while eating one. Had basically turned into that person in the circus, really, once Ribbit was gone. She'd been so intent on avoiding all of their feelings about her that she'd started avoiding the color green. As if by refusing to acknowledge it, she'd be able to cut the grief out of herself, and store it somewhere far away.

But Gangle thinks a story about a mouse trying to be a knight for a princess is cute, so she refuses to let Jax exchange it for something else. She adds her own sketch inside the cover, drawing from Jax's memories to bring the characters to life. It's only once Gangle is done that Jax recognizes the princess as herself. There's two tufts of hair sticking out in a way that almost looks like ears and a few freckles on one side of her face in the same place Jax had had them in her original body. It's a simple enough thing that Jax knows pointing at it will just make it all the more obvious, so she says nothing. Even when Gangle moves on to the mouse and adds a bowtie.

Whatever. Gangle's never met Ribbit before today, anyway. What does she know.

Jax lets herself fade into the background of their mind as Gangle finishes and Zooble takes control to text their parents and check in to their new room.

There's a moment Zooble thinks about their actual parents, the ones who raised Xio Fuentes, but it flickers out before it can become anything.

It's just from seeing Ribbit again, they think. How could they not feel a bit nostalgic for what else they lost?

They'll get it back eventually. They actually believe that, because they have a faith in themself Jax never had. Have faith in their family. Unlike Jax, Zooble could not be replaced or replicated. That was why their parents would know it was really them, if they explained their situation. But that… was a problem for a different day.

They'd agreed to focus on finding the rest of the circus members before searching for anyone from their past before. With how little they knew about everything, and the fact that Ribbit's body had appeared so randomly, it was beginning to seem more likely that there was some force out there masterminding all of this, and it didn't seem wise to bring anyone knew into their collective life until they could figure out just how malevolent that force was.

Pomni's family was an exception, of course. They were already involved by virtue of Pomni being the only one of them that actually survived. Also, it would have been hard to ignore them for their own safety when they'd moved back in with her parents.

Pomni had told her parents everything after they'd come back from the first time they visited Ribbit, back when she was in her coma. Pomni had looked down at the bed of the sleeping body and thought, Shit. I guess this is real, huh?

Jax had almost made a joke about it—what, did you think this was a dream?—but she understood. Jax hadn't been fully convinced that she was real and not just some manifestation of Pomni's trauma that had somehow convinced itself it was sentient. None of them had gotten a chance to say goodbye to their old bodies, either. Seeing Ribbit's had made the change feel tangible.

This wasn't an adventure. They couldn't drop through a portal and revert back to who they'd been before. Being Alice So was forever.

Pomni had written a script for her parents explaining things. She'd edited it several times to make it as clear as possible, then waited until a day when her sister came home, so she could tell them all at once. Pomni liked being prepared like that.

It had gone as well as to be expected. No one believed her, but they had noticed the difference in the way she acted, so they believed that something had been going on. So Pomni had shown the difference between them. Let Zooble speak Spanish. Watch Kinger and Caine explain how to code AI. Have Ragatha speak about housing regulations that Pomni would have no interest in knowing.

"And… You said there are six other people who joined you?" Eomma said. "I thought the police said there were only five bodies they found. Is the girl in the hospital…"

Pomni shook her head.

"There was an AI in the circus," she said. "They built him to watch over us. But he didn't like living like that, either. He just wanted to be our friend, but his programmers put a lot of limitations on his personality that made him end up hurting us instead."

"Thank you," Caine said. It was a nicer description of him than he had been expecting.

"And you… like sharing a mind with him?" Appa asked.

"We've been through a lot together," Pomni said. "All of them—it feels like they're part of my family. Even if I didn't expect this to happen, I don't know what I'd do without them."

Her family looked at one another, clearly conflicted.

"I know this is a lot to take in," Pomni said. "If I didn't have proof of it, I probably wouldn't believe it myself. But I wanted you to know in case…"

"Are you in danger?" Eomma asked sharply. Pomni jerked her head towards her mom in surprise.

"I—I don't know," she admitted. "I just—I don't know how we found her. I—the last time we were in that building, we were alone."

Pomni let them take a moment for the implication in that to sink in.

"But you're happy?" Aera asked, gesturing vaguely. "Being like… this?"

"I really am," Pomni said, and Jax knew she meant it because she felt exactly the same. "Honestly, I wouldn't want to change this for anything."

Ribbit doesn't register when Jax comes in their room the next day. They're staring into space, mouth moving wordlessly with such intense concentration that Jax has to take a moment to make sure they're not casting some kind of spell. She slides the book onto a desk by the bed—and a pair of Frog and Toad plushies, because Jax still can't resist a good gag—before taking a seat.

"I would have brought you something to eat," Jax begins, conversationally. "But I didn't think your tiny stomach could handle anything that's not pathetic hospital food."

Caine hadn't been kidding when he called their bodies non-viable. In addition to all of her muscles having completely atrophied, Ribbit's stomach had shrunk, too, even so that the doctors suspected she'd have trouble absorbing nutrients. Then there had been the lesions in her frontal lobe.

It's part of the reason Jax suspects the other body they found must belong to Kaufmo—Jax doubts that someone who had been in the circus longer would survive getting unplugged, even with medical intervention.

"Thought about buying you a smoothie, but I didn't want to risk it," Jax continues. She hesitates for a moment, then grins. "Bet you wish you could have hopped in this body with us. You could be enjoying a nice, juicy hamburger now instead."

Selfishly, Jax wishes that could be the case. They want her to climb into their chest and make a home next to her heart, allowing them to become so undeniably intertwined Jax would never feel the pain of losing them again.

Ribbit's eyelids flutter rapidly for a moment before turning to Jax and smiling.

"Oh, hey," Ribbit says. "When did you get here?"

Jax considers lying. If she was still the same Jax she'd been in the circus, she'd groan and say something like, "I've been waiting for hours!" and Ragatha would scold her for being cruel and take that as reason enough to fawn over Ribbit in Jax's stead. It's a song and dance that feels a bit less funny when they're sharing a body. Like trying to play two different parts of a comedy duo at once.

Instead, Jax says, "I just got here. You must be in love with me or something, because you woke up as soon as you saw my face."

Ribbit lets out a weezy laugh.

"Well, now I don't have to ask who's in charge," they say. "Hey Jax, you asshole."

Jax salutes.

"That's my middle name," she says. "Alice Jax-You-Asshole So."

"Is that your name now? Alice?"

"It's… our name," Jax replies, gesturing vaguely at her body. "You can keep calling me whatever."

Ribbit frowns at that.

"You deserve your own name, dude," she says. A pause. "Am I still allowed to 'dude' you? Or is that banned because you transitioned?"

"Um, first of all, I didn't transition, I got isekai'd into a hot girl body, just like every closet case dreams of, believe me, there's a difference," Jax says, which makes Zooble laugh inside their head and Ribbit roll their eyes. "But even if it was banned, you'd definitely be on my list of people cool enough to get a pass."

"Is Kaufmo on that list too?" Ribbit grins.

"Maybe." Jax pretends to think. "If he grovels at my feet first."

"For what? That time he pushed you into a volcano?" Ribbit laughs. "I don't know if that really counts as an example of transmisogyny."

"Well, I hated it," Jax says, as if that's all that matters. "Speaking of names—should I start calling you Roxy now?"

"Hell, no." Ribbit makes a face. "I think Ribbit's way better. It makes me sound like a weird little guy. I'm way more of that than some girl."

"You are kind of a weirdo," Jax agrees.

"There was a name I was thinking of," Ribbit says. "Before everything. Never got a real chance to do anything with it, but—you can call me Cass. If you want."

"Cass." Jax tests the name over in her mouth. Cass smiles. Maybe it's Jax's imagination, but her face looks a bit healthier. It feels brave of them, to share this with Jax, so Jax tries to be brave, too. "I guess there is a name I was considering. Kind of didn't see the point, you know? Everyone who knows I'm me exists up here." Jax taps her head. "Changing my name's not going to change what they think of me. And everyone else just thinks I'm Alice, so there's no point in really making a big deal about it or whatever. But I thought—might be nice to have someone call me Cin. Switch up what breed of rabbit I am for a change."

"Is there a rabbit breed called Cinderella now?" Cass asks. Cin shoves her, as gentle as possible.

"Uh, obviously, it's short for Cinnamon," Cin says. She fluffs her hair. "Can't you see from the color of my fur?"

Cass bursts out into a fit of giggles.

"Dude," they say. "We're going to be such furries now."

Cin can't help but laugh. It's true—being a rabbit feels as fundamental to her as being a girl. It's not a surprise to hear Cass feels the same.

"C'mon, Cin," Cass says, leaning forward almost conspiratorially. "You can tell me. You get anyone to commission a fursuit of your actual body yet?"

There's a confusing burst of euphoria at that. Cin tries to push it down, just in case anyone tries to make fun of her for it.

"Haven't found anyone who could capture me in all of my glory yet," Cin replies, pushing her hair back.

"I can't believe you're almost thirty and that's what you're worried about." Cass paused. "Shit, I can't believe I'm almost thirty. Glad you got me out of there before I completely slept through my twenties."

"I feel like coma years shouldn't count," Cin says. "You still look twenty-two, anyway."

That was another odd thing about Cass coming back. When they'd found her, her hair had been cut in a short bob, the same way it had been when Cass first disappeared, according to May. It had been good news to Kinger, who had taken it as a sign his wife's cancer hadn't progressed, despite how much time had passed. Something about the headsets had been meant to keep them in stasis. It hadn't worked well, obviously, but the circus had never technically gotten passed its prototyping stage, anyway. What they could tell from hacking into one was that it had been meant to send short, rhythmic pulses to the player to stimulate brainwaves. How that had stopped Cass' hair from growing, Cin has no idea. It all still feels like magic to her, honestly, though she thinks talking to Cass will always feel like a miracle.

"Well, I guess it doesn't matter." Cass snorts. "My license is expired, anyway. There's no proof I'm even over twenty-one."

"Nah," Cin jokes. "You've gotta be an adult. You've got that haunted look in your eye only someone who knows about taxes can have."

Cass bursts out laughing.

"I'm glad we're friends again," they say, completely sincere. Cin swallows back their guilt and smiles. A thousand apologies run through her head, but she can't bring herself to say any of them.

"I missed you," Cin says instead. "Every day, I—I'm glad you're here now. I don't feel like me without you."

It's an admission she would have never allowed herself to voice in the circus. Cin can feel Pomni's surprise at the vulnerability of it all. She knows what Pomni wants to say, even if she doesn't put those feelings in words—Since when has Cin been nice?

Since I realized there was a way to make up for the worst mistake of my life, Cin thinks. She would grovel at Cass' feet if they asked her to. Spend the rest of her life caring for them, regardless of how badly the circus had broken their body or their mind. Cin would do anything for Cass, as long as it meant they'd be present and alive.

"I should probably let one of the others take over," Cin says suddenly. "Zoobs never had a chance to say hello last time—and you've never seen Kinger when he wasn't crazy! He's a lot different now, believe me. And there's—"

"Caine?" Cass interrupts. Cin tries not to flinch.

"He won't come out if you don't want him to," she says. "I think we finally managed to get him to understand how traumatic his face is."

Cass scoffs at that.

"His face isn't the thing that's traumatic," she mutters.

No. If anything, that honor fell to Cin.

"I'm sorry," Cin blurts out. "I was a shitty friend. I should have been there for you, I just—"

What could she say? There was no excuse. Things had gotten too real, and she had run, the same way she always did, not expecting there to be any consequences beyond her own broken heart. Cin had always expected that she felt things differently than those around her. She was too sensitive, too emotional, too needy and it was better for her to leave before her own feelings got someone else hurt. Which, of course, had turned out so well.

"I'm your best friend, Rabbit," Cass says, looking weary. "I think I always knew why you did it. I just… I don't know."

Cin knows. Cass should have been special enough for Cin to suppress her own worst instincts. If she couldn't be good for Cass, who could she be good for?

"You're not being fair to yourself," Pomni says. "You were in a bad place. It's not that simple."

Sure. But Cass was in a bad place, too, and what Cin had done made it so much worse.

"I'm sorry," Cin says again.

Names became a slightly more complicated topic after they'd explained themself to their parents. There was a hesitation whenever anyone attempted to call them by name. Their parents started calling them daughter like they were waiting to be corrected. Aera, who had previously called them Alice or Ally, had switched to sister or sibling unless she had confirmation that Pomni was the one in charge. Cin had considered pretending to be Pomni, just to get rid of some of the awkwardness, but she assumed she'd be found out too soon for it to be worth it.

Zooble said it reminded them when they first came out, and people would go out of their way to avoid using any pronouns as if they were afraid they'd forgotten how to use the word 'they' in a sentence. Of course, that had been even more annoying because that could have been pretty affirming, if it hadn't been used as a way to avoid acknowledging the matter in the first place.

It felt like a reminder to Cin that they didn't really belong. That no matter how much she loved her new body, she'd never be seen as anything more than as a visitor in it. She wanted to grab Pomni's parents and shake them, demanding they call her Alice. What right did they have to take that away from her? She didn't care about being their daughter. She cared about being the woman she was meant to be.

Zooble thought that meant she was relying too much on external validation for approval on her gender, and that it probably wasn't healthy that she could only be happy if people were mistaking her for Pomni. Cin had responded by thinking very loudly about gore in an attempt to end the conversation, but Pomni had cut in and asked, "If you could name yourself anything in the world, what would it be?"

And Cin had thought it was stupid, because even if she gave herself a new name, where would she hear it? If it was only inside her mind, she might as well stay Jax—it was the name she knew, and the name that everyone who mattered knew her as. Who would she ask to call her anything else? Their parents, who still didn't know what to make of her? Their coworkers, who didn't even know the difference between them, anyway?

It's annoying to realize that Zooble had been right. Something had changed when Cin heard Cass speak her name. She thinks about it on the drive home, feeling human in a way she had thought she'd forgotten she'd known how to feel. She had made peace with the idea that no one would know her the way she was known by the people sharing her body. There was a certain satisfaction in it, knowing that she could only be seen by someone she let in.

Cin imagines Cass cupping her face in their hands and whispering, Cin, Cin, Cin, while Cin desperately whispers their name back, because there is nothing sweeter in this sad world than the sound of someone you love calling your name.

(Things got better with their family, with time. Their parents started to notice the difference between them and begin to separate Caine's excitement from Ragatha's over-powering optimism. Noticed that Kinger preferred to dress in nerdy chic while Zooble was the one buying them jean jackets and distressing their jeans. Aera started to recognize Cin by her sarcasm and sometimes called her Jalice as a joke and Cin relished in these rare moments of sisterhood—though maybe not enough to ask about switching names.)

Once they're at home, Cin realizes she's not sure where to go from here. Pomni had told them there would be periods of stagnation, but she hadn't expected that to make them feel so restless.

It feels like they've done all they can for now. When Cass had first entered the hospital, they had spent the week keeping careful track of everyone who had visited their room, just in case. They'd bought motion-sensor cameras and set them up around the C&A building they'd found her in. They'd found the second body while they were there, too. Looking through Cass' headset had given them the passcode to a locked room—something Cin is sure Cass herself hadn't known. When they opened the door, they had found a man slumped in an ergonomic office chair. There was a blank piece of paper in front of him, like he had nodded off in the middle of work. It felt too cruel to be accidental.

It had been awkward to call for another ambulance so soon after the last. One of the EMTs recognized them and had asked why they hadn't considered finding the first body enough of an omen to stay away. Kinger had told them, careful and collected, that he had known there was more work to be done.

Except, a lot of the work that can be done right now has nothing to do with Cin. Caine had suggested putting the abstracted members in a new simulation that they could use to heal their minds before any body transferring could be done, but Kinger had thought that sounded too much like moving an animal from a circus to a zoo. They were still going through the data from the headsets, but Cin doesn't know enough about coding to help. She had been an English major.

Which means Cin's job is just going to work and trying to figure out how to be normal even though she can't even text Cass yet because her phone plan expired years ago. Cin spends her time daydreaming about what to say next to her, to the point the others can't help but make fun of her.

"I never took you for a romantic," Zooble says.

"I'm not," Cin protests, because she never had been, before this.

Pomni teases Cin in a different way. She pushes herself to the front in a way that feels like she's pinned Cin down and says, "I can show you something you can do to them they might like."

They haven't really put into words, this thing between them. It's hard to know how to. But it feels like Pomni's hands exploring Cin's body, trailing down their stomach and going down deeper, harder, until Cin can't help but let out an "Oh."

Before, Cin would be ashamed to come apart so completely, but there's a certain satisfaction in knowing exactly what Pomni thinks of her in moments like these—that she's cute, that Cass would be lucky to have her, that it is so beautiful they get to experience this together.

To put it more simply: just because they haven't named it doesn't make it casual. This thing between them is more serious than anything Cin has ever felt before.

Maybe that's why she wishes Cass could feel it, too.

Pomni introduces herself their next visit. Cass asks her questions about herself, seemingly in the order they appear in their mind—what did she look like inside the circus, what should Cass call her, what's it like sharing a brain with Cin, what job does she have, has Zooble tried to make them get any piercings yet.

Then, finally—

"How did you do it?"

"It's… hard to explain." Pomni takes a shaky breath. "We had to explore the void to find it. There was this… glitch, I guess? Being in the circus sort of numbs your senses to what's going on outside it. But there's still a connection. It kind of felt like—like I was in two places at once? It's kind of like getting vertigo. But if you focus on it, it starts to feel like you're a tunnel. So you just have to kind of… walk through.

"Kinger says he didn't see any tunnels. It just felt like all his nerves were on fire, and he forgot he had nerves in the first place. I don't think it was really meant to be an exit. Maybe it's just because I was so new?"

"So you got lucky," Cass says.

"Yeah," Pomni agrees. "I got lucky."

"… Did Cin help you figure it out?"

"Everyone did," Pomni replies. Cin feels a pain of guilt, but tries to push it down. "We worked it out together. That's why I knew I couldn't leave without them."

"Oh," Cass says. She stays quiet long enough that Pomni worries she's said something wrong. "That's nice. You must have really bonded in there."

"Um, yeah," Pomni says, but she's using the tone she used to give Cin when she suspected a trick was about to be played on her. "I guess we did."

"I'm tired," Cass announces. "I think I need to take a nap."

"Okay," Pomni says. She helps Cass lay down and adjusts their pillows. "Talk to you soon?"

Cass just grunts in reply.

The thing about Ribbit and Jax is that they fit together so well that sometimes Jax thought she might be the other half of his soul. The thing about Jax was that he had never considered himself a good person.

It wasn't that they never got into fights, before their last one. It was just that when one of them punched, the other never hesitated to punch back. Jax would explode a car she was in in one adventure. Ribbit would get back by pushing him out of a boat in another. Jax would dump hot sauce in the cake they were making so Ribbit would lose a baking competition. Ribbit would respond by stealing all her knives for the next round.

Cin won't lie and say it had never been cruel. Living in a world a digital world had dulled both of their sense of consequence. Everything had been meant to be a prank, though, and that was the important part. Nothing they did was anything they would ever resent the other for—it wasn't like any of it actually mattered, anyway. They were digital. Watching Ribbit's mouth explode with fire was way more fun than thinking about how nothing they cooked actually tasted like it should. Thinking about how cool it was to see someone get blue-shelled in real life was better than thinking about everyone they left behind. There was plenty of times when they got along just fine, without any antics. Ribbit had been the only one to see Jax's room, Jax been the only one Ribbit told stories of their past life to—they'd just been agreement that overall, life was better when you tried to make it funny.

Slapstick was an easy way to cope. Easy to avoid thinking about the reality of your situation when you allowed yourself to be a gimmick instead of something real. That was why Jax had known something was wrong when Ribbit stopped telling jokes. At first, Jax tried joking harder to make up for the difference. He threw Ribbit's lunch into a lake and made a joke about fishfood, hoping they'd make a joke about resorting to eating rabbit. Set up pots and pans next to a banana peel, so when someone slipped, the chaos would be more obvious. But no matter what he did, Ribbit didn't laugh. Finally, Jax had worked up the courage to point out the change, but all Ribbit did was let out a huff and say, "Well, sorry I haven't felt like entertaining you lately." As if that was ever what Jax had been worried about.

No, what scared Jax was that if Ribbit stopped joking, it meant they had accepted the circus as real. That it was just a place that trapped and tortured them, and there was nothing funny about that. What scared Jax was that if Ribbit couldn't find something to laugh at, what else did she have?

Kaufmo wakes up about a month after Cass, and he wakes up screaming. They hadn't been able to find any emergency contact for him, so Alice had been called and they take the day off so Cin can ask her friend what the hell is wrong with him to his face.

"You'd think Cass would be the one having the more negative reaction," Kinger muses. "Considering she'd been abstracted for longer."

"You're thinking about things the wrong way around," Cin replies. Despite her discomfort, she allows him into her memories enough to see what abstraction is like. Kaufmo had been ripped away from the serenity of non-existence and pulled back into a human body. Of course he had to be sedated.

Cin rolls her eyes when she feels Ragatha's guilt. She'd already told Ragatha about this—or, close enough, anyway. She should have been able to read between the lines.

"Still," Ragatha protests. "I wish it hadn't gotten to that point."

Cin doesn't reply. She's not sure there was any other way, really. There's only so many jokes you can make before even the best comedian goes off-stage.

There's a man in Kaufmo's room that Cin recognizes as the C&A representative that had paid for Alice's hospital bills. Cass's too, probably, though Cin hadn't been around for that conversation.

"Are you the emergency contact of Moses Guerrero?" the man asks. Cin doesn't remember his name. Something ironic, maybe. Biblical in a way that had felt a bit too fitting considering the company he worked for. D'Arc, maybe?

"Yes." Cin pushes Kinger to the front to allow him to deal with this. "We—I was the one who found him. But we've never met before this. If you're going to ask him not to sue, you'll have to wait for when he wakes up again. I don't think I have any right to make that decision for him."

D'Arc looks down at Kaufmo's body like he's looking at an ant. He's still knocked out cold. Whatever the nurses gave him, they gave him a lot of it.

"From what I gather," D'Arc says. "This man may not be in a position to make those decisions for himself."

Internally, Cin bristles at his judgment. Kinger doesn't let it show on his face.

"It's a bit early to say for sure, isn't it?" he says smoothly. "I imagine most people aren't too happy when they wake up in a strange location."

D'Arc frowns.

"I'm sure he won't blame the company, if you give him the same offer you gave me," Kinger continues, trying to stay casual. "But it might help if we had more information about where he was being held. Do you have any contacts in C&A's gaming division? I hear that was their old building."

D'Arc's frown deepens.

"C&A," he says slowly. "Has no gaming division."

He hands Kinger his card.

"Contact me when he's able to chat," D'Arc says. "I'd like to get this all settled as soon as possible. For all of our sakes."

With that, he walks out of the room.

"He's lying!" Cin screams. She knows he is—several of the podcast Kinger had listened to had mentioned that the building they'd gotten lost in was the former gaming division.

"Guys," Pomni says. "I think… he honestly believes it."

"But I was contacted by the gaming department!" Ragatha insists. "They were the one who wanted me to sell the building!"

Well. That explained why nothing had become of it since then. If no one owned the building on paper, then it was no one's responsibility to tear it down. And it was no one's fault when someone sneaking into that building disappeared.

"But," Caine protests. "That's not fair!"

"It's not," Zooble agrees. "But it's business."

It's another half hour before the drugs wear off enough for Kaufmo to wake up.

"Kaufmo?" Ragatha asks gently. "It's me, Ragatha. I wanted to tell you—I'm sorry we fought so hard against you. You were right, there was a way out. And we found it! We got out."

"Ragatha," Kaufmo wheezes. Ragatha helps him take a sip of water. "Where's Jax?"

The question makes Ragatha almost drop the cup.

"Jax is here too," Ragatha says carefully. She sets the water on his bedside. "We share a body now. Gangle's here, too. So is Zooble and Kinger, and someone you haven't met yet—it's a long story. We don't have to get into it yet. How are you?"

Kaufmo stares at her like he doesn't understand the question. Probably fair. They're asking him to absorb a lot of information at once. And the drugs definitely aren't out of his system yet. Cin assumes there would be more screaming if they were.

"Jax is a babe?" Kaufmo asks. Cin lets out a breath she didn't know she was holding and starts to laugh.

"Excuse you Kaufy, I've been a babe this entire time!" Cin snorts. "Guess tall and purple just wasn't your type."

Kaufmo gives her a weak smile. Cin can imagine he's thinking the same thing Cass did—the, yeah, that's definitely the Jax I know.

"But," Cin adds hesitantly. "I am starting to use a new name. As part of my commitment to girlhood or whatever. So you can call me Cin. Maybe Cinnamon if I'm feeling extra sweet."

"Oh." Kaufmo bobs his head. "Like the Sanrio guy."

"I—" A quick glance at Gangle's memories tell her exactly who he means. "Cinnamonroll?"

"You have the same ears," Kaufmo smirks, which has Gangle in hysterics inside their head.

"Glad that coma didn't do anything to your sense of humor." Cin grins. "Guess that means you're alright after all."

"Nah, I can use my left hand pretty well, too."

They both laugh.

"I…" Cin hesitates. "I'm sorry. For some of the shit I pulled in the circus… And for bringing you out. I don't know if you—"

She cuts herself off, but Kaufmo nods. He knows what she means.

"It was really nice not having to worry about anything," he says. "It was like there was all this noise inside me that finally shut up. I've never felt relief like that before, Cin. And now I'm back and I'm just—waiting for it to come back, too, I guess."

Cin nods. That's something she can understand pretty well.

"The drugs help, though," Kaufmo adds thoughtfully. "I feel like I'm watching you on TV."

"Yeah, I don't know how long they're going to let you stay on that," Cin says. "Maybe I should ask around and see where they keep their anti-anxiety meds. Can't be too hard to snag a bottle or two."

"Aww, already offering to steal for me," Kaufmo says. "Thanks, Rabbit. What a pal."

She almost makes a joke about it being the least she can do, but it feels like it might hit a bit too close to home.

"So," Cin says instead. "Moses, huh?"

"What, is the Spice Girl trying to make fun of my name?" Kaufmo laughs. "Might as well split the difference and call me 'Mo.'"

"Pretty good name for a clown," Cin teases.

"Watch it," Mo warns. He tries to swat at Cin's arm, but his muscles barely work and the most he can manage is an arm flop in her direction. Once again, Cin wonders if she's done the right thing by saving him. The fact that he'd abstracted meant he had given up on life. To pull him back into the—the macro-verse, as Caine called it, with all of it's bills and drama and flawed healing systems was cruel. Mo had fought to stay alive before, and he had failed. Now they had brought him back in a body that would no doubt be fighting with him constantly.

"Hey, Mo?" Cin almost asks him if it feels worth it, but chickens out. "Missed ya, buddy."

"Wow," Mo says, completely awed. "A Jax with emotions. Things really have changed, huh?"

"Tell anyone and I'll kill you," Cin says, but there's no heat in it.

Jax was probably the only one who laughed at Kaufmo's jokes. Every time he did, Ribbit would squeal, "Don't encourage him!" but Jax couldn't help himself. They were bad jokes, but they were bad in a way that they had wrapped around to becoming anti-jokes, which made them even funnier, though in a different way. Sometimes, Kaufmo didn't even tell jokes, and just went for blatant lies. He would say he was the prince of a foreign land, or that his dad was a senator, and if Jax caused him harm he would tell him that there would be hell to pay once they got back to the real world. Jax would always go along with it, making up an even wilder story to counter like, "Yeah, you may be a prince, but my grandma is the queen of England, and if you sic your bodyguards on me it'll turn into an international incident," or "Sure, your dad is a senator, but mine works for the FBI, and he probably already has a folder of blackmail that he can use to get him out of office. I'm untouchable."

It was funny because it wasn't true. Because no one actually cared about either of them. Kaufmo had never even cared about finding the exit until Ribbit.

"She deserves better than to just die here," Kaufmo had said.

"Since when does this place care about what we deserve?" Jax had snapped back. Kaufmo looked at him like he didn't recognize him and shook his head.

"How long have you been here, Jax?" Kaufmo asked. "You really think the world hasn't changed since you left?"

"Oh, I know it's changed," Jax laughed. "I know it's worse."

She hadn't known it at the time, but her parents had another child in her absence. A boy. Sometimes she thinks she should have been able to feel the betrayal, even inside the circus, but maybe that had been why she was so certain there was no way home. Cin's parents had removed her from their lives the same way you peeled gum off your shoe. She had been certain that was what happened to Ribbit, too.

"What if there's no one out there who misses her?" Jax demanded. "What if we get out and she's just gone for good? You really want to kill her twice?"

"I didn't kill her," Kaufmo said.

"Wow." Jax said. He didn't flinch, because he'd already taught himself not to. "Okay."

"You knew something was wrong." Kaufmo's beady eyes stared into Jax. He took a step back. He wasn't used to him pushing back against him. Wasn't used to sincerity from him, either. "You could have helped."

"I did help," Jax said. He put a hand on his hip and gave a typical Jax grin. "I stopped her from sitting around feeling sorry for herself! Not my fault they couldn't take a joke!"

The punch came as almost a relief. Jax had been expecting it, but hadn't bothered dodging. Kaufmo hit him with enough force that Jax felt the sting of whiplash when he turned back to face the clown. He let his grin drop. Kaufmo was breathing heavy, though Jax suspected it was more out of an effort not to cry then from the punch.

"Not everything has to be funny, man," Kaufmo said, voice cracking.

"What's funny is you being the one to say that," Jax replied. There's no humor in his voice. "I don't think anyone's taken you seriously before in your life."

They don't talk about Ribbit again.

They don't talk about anything much at all after that.

When Ragatha tells Mo Cass is alive and in the same hospital, he starts sobbing. He can still barely move his arms, so Ragatha has to dry his eyes for him while he sniffles about what a miracle it is, that they can all exist in physical space at the same time.

It takes them some time to actually meet. Neither are in a position where their bodies are easily movable. Cass is doing leagues better than Mo, and by that Cin means she can lift her head and twitch her toes. They have to beg a nurse to help strap Cass to a wheelchair so Ragatha can use it to move her down the hall. Mo starts crying again when he sees their face.

"You're alive," Mo says.

"You big baby," Cass says, affectionate. "Why wouldn't I be?"

No one answers their question. Mo cries harder.

"You're going to have to talk about it sometime," Pomni says.

"She doesn't want to talk about it either," Kinger points out gently. "There's no point in saying anything if it ends up doing more harm than good."

Cin has nothing to say to that. It's cowardly, she knows, to keep dancing around it, but she's willing to be a coward a little longer if it keeps Cass smiling.

Ragatha leads the conversation, reminiscing on old adventures and pranks they pulled together.

"You know," Ragatha tells Mo. "I used to see so many bananas when you were around. There was a time where it felt like every adventure we went on, you'd find some way to get one of us to slip on a banana peel—I don't know how you kept finding them!"

"A magician never reveals his secrets," Mo says, smug. "I got you good, though, didn't I?"

"You got all of us." Ragatha tries to hide her smile. "It was kind of funny to see Cin make this big commotion about how poorly we were doing compared to her in an adventure and then get cut off because she lost her balance."

"The key to comedy," Mo begins. He grins, and waits a few moments before continuing. "Is the timing."

Cass groans. Ragatha chuckles politely.

"I don't remember seeing banana peels in the circus," Pomni says.

"Yeah, I guess that gimmick kind of disappeared when he abstracted," Zooble say. "You know, I never really thought about it, but he'd been there longer than me. I guess I just thought of it as part of the circus. So much happened right after that, I never got a chance to think about how different things were without him."

It feels like a careless thing to say when they're sharing a mind with Cin. Zooble must realize this, too, because they offer a hasty apology.

"What that stupid clown did with his free time had nothing to do with me," Cin says, but it's a response built on habit rather than honesty. She feels tired.

She lets the others continue the conversation. Cass tells Zooble a tale of an adventure they sat out on, and Caine feels a rush of pride when they admit that, yeah, that would have been cool. Mo tells Cass about portraits he made with Gangle, and that time he and Kinger got stuck in a maze together—something Kinger himself barely remembers.

Eventually, the topic turns to insurance, so Kinger mentions D'Arc.

"I mean, I'm fine with selling my soul for free healthcare," Mo says. "I used to work for C&A anyway, so they might own it anyway."

"Seriously?" Cass says.

"As a janitor," Mo elaborates. "They fired me before I left for the circus. Part of the reason I ended up in the building, actually. I thought it'd be a funny place to jump."

Cin pushes the others back before they can make any comments about that.

"And now they're paying way more than your salary in medical bills," Cin says. "Now that's funny."

"Punchline's a lot better, isn't it? Mo grins at her.

Cin knows how all of the others entered the circus. She can remember Gangle's manic episode that led her to driving around aimlessly for hours after work before she finally ran out of gas and had gone to the building looking for help. Ragatha had left a binder in her car regarding the listing for the building. Kinger was interested in finding it, but no one had managed to recover either vehicle—or if they had, no one had bothered mentioning it to them. Kinger had, of course, volunteered for all of this, a fact that seems almost deliriously naive now, though maybe not as stupid as Zooble and Pomni mapping out their trip there.

These memories, though they don't belong to her, swirl in her head when she thinks about what Mo said. Cin remembers gauging the height of the building before she walked in and thinking, "No way anyone could survive a fall from there."

She hadn't been planning on jumping, but she had been aware the option was there for her and had let the thought be a comfort. Mainly, she had been thinking it would be a good place to spend the night. It had been spring break. She'd been home from college, despite her best efforts, and she'd gotten into a fight with her parents, though fights between them happened so often, it was almost like saying Cin was breathing air.

Eventually, it had felt suffocating enough that Cin had stolen her parents keys and gone for a ride. She'd been considering blowing off steam by getting drunk, or getting addicted to cigarettes, but had found the building before she had the chance to make any other kind of bad decision. The police found the car by the side of the road. Probably a suicide, they thought. No one bothered looking too hard for the body. It must have not seemed important enough at the time.

Cass had been in the same boat, even down to taking her mom's keys. May had told them as much during Cass's coma, but Jax had heard it himself from her back when they were both still stuck looking like cartoon animals.

Ribbit's father had died when she was young, and her mom hadn't known how to raise a child alone. So she'd dated, despite all of Ribbit's protests that things were fine with just the two of them. Then, even more unforgivable, Ribbit's mom had actually gotten married.

They tried co-existence. They tried compromise. But one day, Ribbit just… had enough.

"I don't even remember what the final straw was," Ribbit confessed. They were lying on the floor of Jax's room, looking up at the glow-in-the-dark stars. "I just remember thinking, 'I'm never going to be happy if I stay here,' so I left."

"And now you're here," Jax said. He was laying in his bed, elbows propped up to hold his head as he looked down at them. He doesn't tell her that the idea of leaving forever feels so terrifyingly final. Jax had never seriously considered leaving home—only cutting out parts of himself and letting them wither in the sun outside. Easier to stay numb then think about what fighting back too hard might bring.

"Now I'm here," Ribbit agreed. They tilted their head to get a better look at him and smiled, like maybe here wasn't the worst place in the world they could be, so Jax let one of his hands dangle off his bed and waited for Ribbit to latch on.

Mo had developed a problem where various parts in his body would start stinging without cause. Neuropathy, the doctor called it. They couldn't fix it, only dull the pain. Mo says it's a pity weed isn't allowed in the hospital, because he's sure it's a problem he can smoke away. Strangely, it's not an issue Cass seems to be dealing with, though she does have osteoporosis.

"It's fine," Cass says, when she mentions it to Cin. "Frogs don't have bones."

"They definitely do," Cin argues. "How else would they jump so high?"

"Cartilage," Cass replies, triumphant. Cin knows they're saying it just to make her mad, so she sticks up her middle finger, which just makes Cass grin wider.

"They really did make two of you," Pomni notes. It's true. Cin is the only one who can match Cass when it comes to rage-baiting.

More worryingly are the blackouts both Mo and Cass keep having. They keep on trying different medication, but nothing seems to prevent the two from having moments where they just… stop.

Caine says it's got to be a problem with their coding. That because their abstraction was never cured, they weren't re-uploaded back into their bodies correctly. He apologizes profusely for this. Kinger really hopes this isn't the case, because the only way he can think to fix that is to put them back in the circus, and he's not sure he trusts the headsets enough to get them out a second time. They don't really know how to help them, but Cin has never known how to help Cass, so as far as she's concerned, things aren't much different, anyway.

May confesses to Kinger she's not sure what to do. She says that sometimes, Cass uses the blackouts as an excuse not to talk to her, at least about some difficult things, and it's made it hard for her to tell how frequent they actually are. She wants Cass to talk to an actual therapist, just in case the problem might be dissociation related, but Cass is firmly against it. Cin isn't surprised. What would a therapist know about dying in a video game?

Cass hasn't told her mom what happened. All she's said is that she went into the building, and doesn't remember what happened next, which Ragatha thinks might be more worrying than the truth.

"I just wish there was something I could do to help," May says.

What Cin would say is, after a lifetime of trying to disappear, attention from a parent can feel like a trap. Cin had grown up hearing, "I just want to help" as a threat. A way to shove her into the mold they'd made for her, or to find a weakness they could use against her. Better to present an invincible front then let someone bring you down through a crack in your armor.

What Kinger says is, "Give them time. Everything that happened between you two feels more recent to them. They haven't had the opportunity to process things the way you have. Just be present, and give them space to see how things have changed."

Sometimes, Cin thinks that instead of learning computer science, Kinger should have been a poet. May's eyes go a bit watery, so Kinger hugs her, and promises to look out for Cass for her.

No one comes for Mo, though. Pomni offers to look for old friends, even old neighbors, but he just laughs good-naturedly and refuses.

"The only people who care about me are in this building," he says, and Cin can feel the way Pomni turns that statement over in her mind, like it's made her realize something new about Cin, too.

"At least let us log in to your old Facebook to jumpscare everyone," Cin says, pushing Pomni out of the front. "We can take a picture of you so you can be like, 'Surprise, assholes—I survived!'"

Mo laughs again.

"Nah, then my cousins'll see it and they'll make me go to the next family reunion," he says. "I'm better off without that, trust me."

"Is he actually happy he survived?" The thought appears in their mind before Pomni can stop herself. Cin clenches their jaw to prevent the spike of anger the question gives her, because she honestly doesn't know. She wants Mo to survive because she's surviving, but she knows how complicated what she's asking for is. Maybe escaping had never been about getting out for him. Maybe it had been he'd just wanted the game to be over.

That was the big joke of it all, wasn't it? Finding someone obviously suicidal and trapping them in a world where they'd never die. At least abstraction hurt less falling off a building.

"What do you want to do," Cin says. "When you get out of here?"

Mo blinks, surprised by the question.

"Honestly?" he says thoughtfully. "I kind of want a burger."

"I'll buy you a kid's meal," Cin tells him. "You're going to have to work your way up to eating anything bigger."

"That's fine." Mo grins. "I want to see what toys they come with now."

"You think you're going to even know what it's a toy of?" Cin scoffs.

"I might!" Mo protests. "You don't know what kind of TV they've got me watching here."

"Ugh," Cin says. "I gotta buy you some comics or something, Mo-man. Don't you know TV'll rot your brain?"

Still. A burger is something. It's a promise death isn't the only thing on his mind, and Cin will take that as a win for now.

"You understand him awfully well," Ragatha notes.

Well, yes. There's no point in lying to someone who shares your mind. Cin had survived for less before. It had been what had kept her breathing before she realized she didn't have to settle for a life that didn't fit her.

In between going to work and taking care of Cass and Mo, they still try and look for answers. The amount of time they have for it has been rapidly diminishing, but after a few strongly-worded messages to D'Arc—Gangle's specialty, apparently—they're put into contact with a technology division of C&A that Kinger thinks may have absorbed some of the members of his old group. It's not open to the public, but Pomni searches through their staff on LinkedIn and emails someone Kinger thinks looks familiar—being together has made him sharper than ever, but some of his past before the circus is still blurry to him—asking for a tour. She knows it's a stretch for her to claim to be an old friend of Kinger's, considering he disappeared in the 90s, so they pretend to be a cousin instead.

Cin thinks it's a stupid idea. She's sure that mentioning Kinger by his actual name will get them put on a watchlist somewhere, but Zooble says that at least if someone comes after them, they'll know who they're fighting, which is enough for Caine to find the whole situation exciting.

Caine is the one who prepares a backstory for them. Pomni's not sure anyone will question their actions enough to warrant it, but for the purposes of their visit, they become Allison Ziegler, the first cousin once removed of Mikhail Ziegler. Zooble makes them a fake ID for the occasion—really, just slaps a picture on top of their old one, but it's realistic enough to fool the security when they arrive. If this had been before, Cin would have been delighted to learn about another wild hobby of Zooble's, but now, it just makes them anxious. Not that Cin had never used a fake ID before, but still—the stakes are higher than she'd like.

They let Caine ramble on about the ridiculously-detailed backstory he's concocted, telling the man leading them around that they had just gotten into computer-engineering, but hadn't known she'd had any family members interested in until she read an article about the police finding her cousin's body.

"Gone too soon," Caine says, wiping a tear from his eye. He'd learned to cry on command after a few months of sharing the body with everyone, something Cin is still privately impressed by. "But being employed by C&A… it must have been a dream come true!"

Their tour guide laughs.

"It's definitely the company to go to if you want funding," he says. "Especially back in the 90s. They were approving almost every project we approached them with. New ideas for phones, for televisions… I think it's one of the reasons they ended up becoming the powerhouse they are today. Our superiors always told us, 'If someone can build it, C&A can build it better.' But they were strict, too. They weren't afraid to pull that funding if you weren't giving them the results they wanted."

"Oh, wow," Caine says. The man gets a bit teary-eyed.

"Even if all it took was a few more weeks of work to perfect it… Sometimes, that just wasn't enough. If you didn't go above and beyond… Well, then you weren't C&A material," he says. "A lot of people couldn't handle it. Some of them ended up leaving the field completely. Other times… well, you could say mistakes were made."

For a moment, Cin is terrified that there might not be a mystery here at all. Maybe the way they'd found the bodies was pure chance, and the reason no one had known about the building was that it had simply gotten lost in the rush towards progress. Files could get lost. Personnel could disappear. None of that meant that someone was out to get them. None of that meant that the blame for joining the circus fell on anyone but them. It wasn't like Kinger remembered enough to prove that wrong.

"Between you and me, I wish we'd fought more for our AI projects," their tour guide admits. "There were some coworkers of mine that had been really hard at work, but C&A pretty much trashed what they had once the project ended. No point in keeping what didn't work, right? But now that investors are starting to get interested in stuff like that again… Well, I wouldn't be surprised if someone admitted they still had some old work on a drive that's been in their attic for the last two decades or so."

Caine perks up at that.

"Do you think there's a chance one of the old offices might have not been completely cleaned out?" he asks.

"I mean—anything is possible." The man shrugs. "But even if there is something out there, it won't be all of what we had before. Even if we found the most advanced model of our old AI, I don't think there's anyone around who'd be able to replicate it now. Sometimes you really don't know what you've got until it's too late."

Meaning, whatever happened with the circus, Kinger might be the only expert left. It was convenient of him to go out of his way to say it. They didn't even have to fish for the information.

"It means we're on our own again," Zooble says, but when have they not been?

"But," the man adds, misinterpreting their expression. "That doesn't mean we can't create something new now. It won't be the same as what we had before, but it'll be a new era. I'm sure it'll be perfect in its own way."

They go back to the C&A building and try to pick the locks of one of the rooms they haven't explored. Zooble and Pomni have both picked locks before, in their efforts to explore abandoned buildings in the past, but Pomni lost her kit for it, and it took them a while to replace it. Even with the help, it takes them a while to get the door open—at one point, Cin gives up and just tosses a chair—but when they look inside the room is empty.

Kinger is thinking. Cass and Mo were found in different spots. In all of the podcasts he listened to, all of the true-crime he consumed, no one had mentioned finding any bodies. Which means they must be still here.

What Kinger has never said, something that Cin hasn't even dared to joke about, is that he doesn't even remember all of the names of who he went in with. That even if he did, there would still be some members of the circus that will stay lost to time unless they find a body with an ID on it.

Really, it's not about everyone else. Kinger's desire sings through him with every step. Cin can hear his wife's naming running through their head like a beat. Reyna, Reyna, Reyna. A cry of desperation and a song.

What Kinger has not said, but what Cin knows he must think about is—Cass and Moses don't even like their lives. All they'd ever wanted to do was escape. Escape the people who knew them, escape the circus, escape the fact they still have to wake up in the morning. What made them so lucky to return to life, but Reyna would get no second chance? She'd clung on so tightly to her life, so his game would be the last thing she saw. So that he would be with her in the end, if it did end. But now he was still here now, younger than he had been in years.

And she was still gone.

They open more doors. They don't find her.

I'm sorry, Cin wants to say. It's selfish, I know. But I found my way through it. I want to believe they can, too.

Caine thinks it's because the way they entered the circus had been accidental. Kinger had been a dev, back when the building still had people, and people with a reason to hide the bodies of the mistakes of the past. It was a miracle Mo and Cass had survived, but any of Kinger's team would have to deal with at least double the time spent unconscious. Two decades of time spent unconscious. Two decades of a body in decay, of someone deciding to move them off-site.

Morbidly, Gangle wonders if the server room they had found ate the rest of them. Cin blames herself making them watch Akira together.

But their minds are still somewhere in the building, Pomni reminds them. Even without a body, there has to be something.

Sure. But that doesn't change the fact they don't know where else to look. Maybe Reyna's in the wires. Maybe her mind powers the building like electricity. Maybe she's saved in a hard drive in one of the computers that survived. But that's the thing. It's a big building, and they just don't know.

It's not that he's starting to lose faith. Kinger would spend the rest of his life looking for her, if he could, but it's not just his life.

"You're all so young." Kinger sighs. "You deserve to go out and fall in love, not spend your time letting an old man pull you around like this. It's not—"

Not worth it, but Kinger can't say that. Reyna is worth everything.

"You're wrong," Cin says. She thinks about finding Cass on that table. Gangle had said with the way she was posed so carefully, she looked like a sleeping princess and even if she was still scared to say the words, Cin had known. Known that this was someone she had spent years living for. Someone that had held her fragile heart in their grasp and had only let it break because their fingers were too brittle. She knew she would wait at their bedside like a knight and stay vigil as long as it took until they woke again.

Cass had never been their princess. Ribbit had been loud and obnoxious and flighty. She was just as much of a pain in the ass as Jax was. But if her last memory of them was eating soup, Cin would steal all the spoons in the circus just to make sure nothing replaced it. Cin isn't sure how old she is anymore. She'd left her last human body when she was twenty-two, and it had been—what? Seven years since then? Alice So just turned twenty-six. Maybe Cin is both now. She feels older then twenty-two, at least. Old enough to know what she wants. Old enough to know that she's found what completes her, and it's people she only found because of a terrible VR game.

If Cin was a romantic, she would have said that Cass' survival came as no surprise, because she was already Cin's heart. If Cin survived, her heart had to beat somewhere, so maybe Reyna was the same. Kinger was alive. Whatever red string of fate had connected Cin and Cass must connect Kinger with his wife, too. The only thing left to do was follow it to the source.

Of course, Cin isn't really a romantic, so she doesn't believe any of that.

"What's the point of doing anything, if you don't get a chance to tell her about it?" Cin asks instead. "Don't you want her to think you're cool when she comes back?

Kinger takes a moment to absorb Cin's words, and all the emotions that come along with it.

"Thank you, Cin," he says.

Cass is getting checked out of the hospital soon. She's far from better, of course, but May has fixed up Cass' old room to make it accessible, and they more or less have Cass' symptoms managed—as much as they can, anyway.

"You ready to go home?" Cin asks.

"Would you be?" Cass shoots back. Cin laughs.

"Fuck no."

"Exactly." Cass frowns. "But it turns out when your kid goes missing for, like, eight years, you do a lot of personal growth. So maybe it won't be as bad as it could be."

"Not missing any home cooked meals?" Cin jokes. Cass rolls her eyes.

"We were more of a TV dinner kind of family," they say. "Nah, what I miss is having a computer. Then you can finally DM me instead of having to text me through my mom like we're five."

Something about the statement makes Cin freeze.

"What?" Cass demands.

"I—" Cin shakes her head. "It's stupid. I guess it just hit me. We're going to be real internet friends now, you know? We met in some freakshow circus and now we get to be the kind of people that send internet memes to each other."

Now it's Cass that freezes.

"Ha ha," she says, a bit too forceful to sound real. "I got you to admit it."

"Admit what?" Cin asks, though she thinks she might have an idea.

She remembers what she said. That there are no friends in the circus, only convenient lackeys. Jax could see it on the tip of their tongue. That Ribbit was going to say the one thing that would make it all fall down, the, "but we're not just good friends, are we?" and Jax would have to admit that he didn't deserve her, that he never did, that it was better she pull away now before she made Jax her boyfriend, which somehow felt as equally terrifying as a rejection.

"You called us friends," Cass says, in a sing-songy kind of tone, jabbing Cin in the stomach. "I win."

Cin leans down to grab her hand. She doesn't make eye contact, because she knows they both hate it.

It's hard to tell how long it's been since their fight. Back when they had been just two fucked up animals screaming over a winter backdrop, looking into each other and hoping to find a reason to live. Maybe they had latched onto each other a little too hard, but it was hard to imagine having any other choice, the way things were then.

"Ribbit," Cin says, and she's not saying it for Cass, not exactly, but for the people they used to be, about a million years ago, when they had thought it would be the two of them against the world forever. "You were my everything."

Later, Cin asks Mo what he plans on doing when he gets discharged.

"I haven't thought that far ahead," Mo admits, nervously. "You probably haven't realized, 'cause I was such a popular guy back in the circus, but—"

"We could take care of you." Cin blurts it out without thinking. Mo raises an eyebrow that tells her to be serious, so Cin shrugs, like she doesn't know why Mo would think that. "Got to get you better somehow. How else am I going to fulfill my life-long dream of being pied by a real clown?"

"You're the last person I'd think would be bugging me about self-care," Mo says. Cin shrugs again, even though she knows exactly what he means. Maybe it's just that the thing is, Cin hasn't been doing self care for a while. She'd started taking care of this body because it had been Pomni's, then had selfishly found reasons to love it as her own. Then that love had made her want to carve out a space for herself, so Cin had started living. It's strange how suddenly it occurs to her now. She loves her life. She's not sure she realized that until now.

She's sure Mo will figure this all out eventually. Cass, too. They'd always been smarter than her, anyway.

"I'm just saying," Cin says. "Whatever happens next, we can figure it out."