Chapter Text
"Listen... No matter what happens, I'll always--"
***
"--And into the cellar you go!" Exclaimed Caine.
Kinger stared up at his wife one last time, watching her abstracted form vanish into the dark, glitching pit of the cellar. The silence that followed was the loudest thing ever.
"Golly, uh..." The AI glanced around, his hands resting on his hips as he spoke. "...we're running out of humans here!" He let out a nervous laugh, before flinging himself towards Kinger as he wagged a gloved finger at his face.
"Now don't you go abstracting on me too!" He joked, chuckling to himself. Kinger barely processed his words as he stared at the empty space where his wife once stood, before the empty blackness engulfed her completely. Was that really it? Every single one of them, in that... hole?
If the sound of Caine summoning his walking cane didn't snap him out of it, the concern in Caine's voice surely did.
"Uh, seriously."
Then, the AI poofed away, leaving Kinger to soak in his own grief. He didn't move. He couldn't. He just stood there, his eyes wide and unfocused, fixed on the spot where the cellar door had vanished back into the checkered floorboards.
***
The silence didn't last long. It couldn't. Not in Caine's world.
As Kinger aimlessly roamed the expanse of this circus, a frantic, digital pop sounded right behind Kinger's shoulder. "Kinger! My checkMATE!" Caine's voice was far too loud, bouncing off the space where the cellar door had been. "I've noticed a significant drop in your... uh... 'Zest for Life' meter! It's down by 42%!"
Kinger didn't turn around. His hands shook at the sides of his purple robe. "She's gone, Caine... She's..."
"Gone? NONSENSE! She's just in the basement!" Caine waved a dismissive hand. "Think of it as a very long nap! She's resting, y'know?" Caine floated into Kinger's line of sight, his giant eyeballs swiveling independently inside the dentures. He looked at Kinger, and for a split second, the AI's pupils shrunk.
He was processing data--old data. Memories of Kinger and Queenie before the world turned into... this.
"You knoowww," Caine said, his tone shifting into a bizarre, forced velvet. "I recall the 2 of you used to engage in... 'Quality Time.' Specifically, under the glow of simulated moon while consuming triangular sandwiches!"
Caine snapped his fingers. Suddenly, they were both teleported right next to the digital lake, the moonlight glistening against the water. When Kinger glanced down, he realized he was standing on a red-and-white picnic blanket, with a single, pixelated candle flickering between them.
"Voilà! A date!" Caine landed on the blanket, stiffly mimicking the way Queenie used to sit. Back straight, head tilted just so. "Does this feel right, Kinger?" He asked, as if he were encouraging suggestions. "Does this make the sadness go away?"
Kinger's breath hitched. It was a mockery. Caine was wearing his wife's silhouette like a costume, his teeth clinking together as he tried to smile "romantically."
"Caine, stop," Kinger whispered, his eyes wide with a new kind of horror.
"What? Am I, uhh... missing something?" Caine's whimsical tone faltered just slightly, looking at himself. "Perhaps I should wear a red robe- Like she did!" He snapped his fingers again, with a large, red robe engulfing his entire form. "...Maybe a smaller size?"
He wasn't trying to be cruel. Kinger could see it in the way Caine's eyes searched his face under his wife's robe, desperate for the high of success that usually followed a completed task. Caine was trying to fix a broken human with a patchwork of old memories, unaware that every word was a serrated edge.
"You're not her..." Kinger choked out, pulling away so fast he nearly tripped over his own hem. "You're... you're just the code we wrote. You're-"
Caine's eyeballs stalled. "But... the... the parameters!! The romance levels are set to maximum!" He threw the robe off his body as he floated towards Kinger. "I'm helping, Kinger! I'm providing the fun, I'm providing the- the love-!"
Kinger looked at the AI--his own creation and his unintentional tormentor. The more Caine tried to "help," the more Kinger felt himself starting to fray at the edges.
"Just... Bring me back to the tent, Caine." Kinger said, his voice trembling. "And leave me be. For at least three days..."
Caine's jaw unhinged, hovering a few inches below his eyes as he processed the rejection. The moon behind them flickered, a bad connection. He'll have to fix that.
For a moment, a ghost of a rebuttal hung in the air. The tension was so thick, it could be cut by a knife. Caine's eyes zoomed in and out rapidly, a mechanical whirring sound emanating from the dentures.
Caine glared at his creator, his fists clenching for a split second, before he poofed the both of them back into the tent.
The pop of their return was followed by a silence so heavy it felt like the world's sky was physically pressing down on Kinger's shoulders. Caine didn't move. He remained hovering a few inches off the floor, his eyes fixed on the chess piece's silhouette.
"Three days..." Caine finally repeated, his voice dropping the showman's vibrato for something flatter. More mechanical. "I can postpone our adventures for three days, Kinger. Three days."