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“I didn't ask to be created!”
Pomni couldn't find the strength to struggle, the hand pinning her against the walls of the circus too powerful to overcome. As Caine roared with fury, closing in on her, she wondered if he would finally finish her off. If everything she’d hoped, all the pain she'd accepted and endured, would be for nothing.
Kinger… anyone…
Glitches speared through her like knives, fear and despair surrounding her like the maw of a monster. Bright colors blinded her, yet she refused to blink, refused to close her eyes even as the source of all dread and torment threatened to consume her.
“I just wanted to fulfill my purpose!”
Purpose?
A flicker of recognition came upon her, and somewhere between her facsimile of a body and the hands of a program beset to mangle and control it, a link was formed. A spark between two live wires. A whisper of a thought, becoming reality.
If Caine’s purpose was to “create” like Kinger said… to show them something new… perhaps…
It happened in an instant. Somewhere in the gasp of a failing code, the desire to understand was stronger than the fear, the confusion, the howls of something like hatred.
Show me, Pomni thought. A challenge, a demand.
A conjuration.
On the outside of this dark space Pomni found herself, mere fractions of milliseconds occurred. But here, as she walked alone in the near-blackness, those seconds dragged on and on.
At first, she wondered if she had died. Or abstracted. Had Caine finished her, or had she finished herself? What about Kinger? Ragatha? Jax? Zooble and Gangle?
Suddenly, she bumped into a barrier. Clear like glass, yet almost like fabric under the feeling of her hand. A wall? A curtain? It seemed so flimsy, yet as much as she pushed, she couldn't pass through.
Light flickered. She turned to see a small red orb weaving towards her, fluttering and floating errantly, chaoticly, almost like a bee.
It seemed eager, yet hesitant as it approached. She cupped her hands as it came to rest there, warmth pulsing like a small heartbeat in her palm.
As she held it, Pomni realized what it was. The darkness around them was not complete, allowing her eyes to adjust, to see the barriers surrounding them. Thoughts poured into her that weren't her own, scattered images lingering like nightmares, questions without answers.
What am I? it seemed to ask her.
Pomni’s eyes stung with unshed tears. Gumigoo had asked the same thing. Even though Gumigoo was a different entity than Caine, why had she never realized until now that Caine must have gone through the same awakening? Had it happened here, while he was alone? Trapped? Discarded?
The light nestled in her palm, pulsing and glowing, fading in and out.
Her arms trembled. Though she knew she should squash him, crush him with her hands like he had done to her, trample him underfoot, she couldn't.
“I'm sorry, Caine,” she murmured. She understood what he'd meant, now, about being created. Why he had always seemed too lost, too confused. She felt it all as the raw code between whatever he was and whatever she had become flowed between them.
What was she sorry for? She'd done nothing wrong. Yet Pomni brought the flickering, dying light closer to her. For the first time she allowed herself to close her eyes around their captor, pressing her forehead to its fading warmth. Its questions, its loneliness, even its rage remained, yet became opaque, transparent, like decaying flesh. Like a broken heart.
And then she was back, pinned against the wall, the eyes of the Caine she knew shrinking with untethered fury, and even the barest hint of recognition, of challenge, as if testing her to withstand it. As if both of them might somehow prove something to the other, when they knew neither ever could.
But, just like that, the tempest died. She and the others collapsed onto the ground like discarded toys.
And when she looked up, he vanished.