Idk man

The ground rumbles and the walls shake as he takes his entrance.

You watch his walk with a quick, beating heart. His name has been mentioned so many times. So this is the Prototype.

He meets your eyes the moment his smiling face reveals itself. It never leaves you until Poppy speaks up.

You, however, keep looking.

"An outsider," his voice crackles, turning to see you.

The Prototype's face is closer to yours. You can see him much better this way.

You give him a slight smile.

Whether he reacted or not, you don't really know. He immediately turns to Poppy and continues his speech.

So, no, you don't really see him actively giving side glances to your expressions.

— 💮

When he finally has you for himself, he genuinely just decides to grab you gently (make sure the Poppy incident doesn't happen again) and puts you down somewhere to have you face-level him.

"You do not seem very afraid," he says, straight to the point.

You hum, rubbing a sore spot on the back of your neck. The tip of his finger dug into it a little too much. "Am I supposed to? I know Poppy is afraid of you..."

He pauses. You briefly wonder if he got offended by that.

"I keep hearing your name," you mutter, looking into his awake eye. "I saw your hand before. I'll be honest, Prototype... I thought you'd look a little bit more terrifying."

"Just like them, I am but a child's toy," he nods. "Broken and abandoned."

Your frown can't be helped. "I'm sorry to hear that."

His head tilts with a snap. "Do you understand?"

You watch him walk, his legs clicking with every step. "Understand? No, not at all."

"...Thank you for your honesty," he says slowly, turning to look at you. "Where do you plan to go next?"

Ah, that's right, what were you doing before he interrupted you so kindly? Getting a lot harder to keep track of what you're doing, especially when you're barely surviving.

"I was," you pause. "I was going to... wait, Poppy, I—"

"You will be coming with me, this time," the Prototype decides. "She has burdened you enough, has she not?"

You're taken aback. He wants you to come with him? "Excuse me? Are you going to kill me?"

"No," he says simply. It takes him a good moment before his next words. You just wait in looming anticipation.

"You will help me put an end to everything," he eventually says. "Poppy is lost; she does not understand what I'm trying to do. I will tell you my cause, our story, and I will guarantee your protection."

That's a tempting offer. Heavily, heavily, tempting. You remember his words: "The only heaven you and I will ever get."

They're both lost—that, you can say as much. He even mentioned your protection, you won't be against the prototype and his hunters anymore.

"I... can't," you exhale, looking at the ground. "Sorry."

"I will give you 10 seconds to run," he declares as he stares at you. "The next time I catch you, you have no choice but to oblige."

Okay. So, you do the only option. Run.

You find yourself back in Caine's office.

The first thing you notice are the cuffs around your wrists. You have to admit they're rather beautifully crafted with symbols that you can relate to. Furrowing your brows, you tug at them impotently, then follow the chains to the source—his office chair.

"Caine?" you murmur, afraid.

He laughs as he taps a stack of paper on his table. "You know, my dear, I realized something! I shouldn't have you be so close to the others."

You stand up, the chains rattling under you. They feel heavy. "What do you... mean?"

Caine flies over to you with an expression akin to a smile, taking one of your hands. His eyes are big and full of admiration and expectation. "You've always stood by me! Everything I do for you humans, you recognize."

You don't say anything. He doesn't mind it though, he proceeds to carry you princess style and floats in idleness with you.

"I figured I can't let them influence you," he says casually, but your heart drops to the bottom of your stomach. Yet Caine affectionately rubs his canines on your face. "They're being selfish, right?? They've been nothing but impolite to me! At least you know what I'm going through!"

"Caine, I—"

"I can't have you turning against me too. So you're going to stay right here with me in my office!" he chuckles, dropping you on his chair. "I need a better company than Bubble anyway, haha...."

You try again. "I—"

"Let me guess!" he exclaims, pointing to your chains. "You like your handcuffs? I designed it perfectly to your taste!"

Your eyes glance at your wrists. It's true; it's oddly charming. "It's lovely, but—"

You stop your own sentence. He doesn't interrupt, watching you expectantly.

"But for how long am I gonna be here?"

Caine pauses.

"Do you not like it?"

"I—I do! I just don't like the feeling of having handcuffs very much."

He just stares at you.

"I see," he mumbles. The top of his teeth are hiding his eyes. "Alright. That's something you want."

His choice of words is interesting. You already know that you messed up somehow. Holy shit — you really can't understand what's going on with him.

Suddenly, he twirls. "You're lucky that I made something else for you, no cuffs and chains involved!"

In a blink, the uncomfortable suffocation in your wrists is gone.

But at the same time, you're suddenly in a small, boxlike space that has the view of his office behind bars.

You can barely move your limbs. "Caine? Am I in a cage?!"

"Yes! It has a similar design to your handcuffs! Oh, I guess you can't exactly see it from there. HAHAHAHA!"

This is not what you meant. Absolutely not. It's even worse than the chains.

"Okay, maybe we can go back to the chains!" you say hurriedly, "I-I wanna see the cage too!"

He keeps giggling. "Oh, brilliant idea! I'll adjust your cuffs slightly as well!"

With a snap of his fingers, you're back on his office chair, and you can see the cage he just willingly put you in. Much like the cuffs now present on your wrists again, they're sculpted to your likings.

"That's... beautiful," you almost cried out, staring with widened eyes.

"Isn't it?" His voice is suddenly right next to you.

You turn towards him, unable to even muster up a smile. He pretends not to notice and checks the back of his wrist for a non-existent watch clock.

"Well then! It's time for another adventure for the crew!"

You sigh with relief. Anything but this. "Ah, that's—"

"Except you."

You give him a look. "What?"

"Like I said, you're not going anywhere that isn't my side. I forbid you from interacting with anyone else. They're bad influences at the moment! I'm sure you understand," he explains, patting your head.

"I'll be back as soon as I can. For now, make yourself at home!"

Just like that, he's gone, leaving you in chains.

---

Ten years after the Hour of Joy, you still exist.

The factory doesn’t breathe the way it used to. It groans. Rust blooms like flowers along the rails. The air tastes like old batteries and dried paint. Somewhere below, something drags metal across concrete.

You were never ridden away with.

No child claimed you.

No truck transported you.

No cult crowned you.

You survived by accident.

And tonight, the accident meets intention.

You feel him before you see him.

The lights flicker—not randomly, but rhythmically. Coordinated. Like a pulse syncing to something larger than the grid.

Then he descends.

Metal legs first.

Six of them—jointed, serrated, clicking softly against the catwalk as if he weighs nothing at all. Then the elongated torso lowers into view, thin and stretched wrong, a faint orange glow pulsing in the hollow of his abdomen. Three additional arms hang folded against the spider-body’s front—familiar pieces stitched into blasphemy.

A flash of pink plastic, blue fur. Elastic limbs you remember seeing once across the courtyard.

Salvaged.

His porcelain jester face tilts downward.

One socket is empty.

The other burns.

You have never seen him before.

But you know.

“Experiment…” The voice overlaps itself—layers of tones stacked like corrupted audio. A child. A woman. A man. Then something metallic underneath. “Curious.”

You stand taller than most toys ever did. You were meant to loom. To impress. To be hugged by cranes, not children.

And yet he makes you feel small. “I don’t recall you.”

It isn’t confusion.

It is perfect offense.

His claws flex. The sound is delicate. Surgical.

You search your memory banks for advertisements, slogans, launch dates. Anything that would make you important enough to be remembered.

There’s nothing.

“I was scheduled for review,” you answer, your voice heavy with disuse. It echoes in the hollow production floor. “The line was discontinued before release.”

His head tilts further. Too far.

“No jingle,” he murmurs. “No smiling faces. No demand.”

The orange pupil narrows, “Uninfluenced.”

There’s interest there now.

That is worse.

You watch one of the grafted arms twitch—a long pink limb with elastic joints. Not alive. Not dead. Just… repurposed.

“You didn’t join them,” you say. The words leave before you can stop them, whatever skin lies beneath your better conscience flinches.

The silence that follows is not empty, it is evaluating.

“Them?” he echoes softly.

“The others. The loyal ones. The ones who tore and fed and followed.”

You remained in storage during the massacre. Locked behind a reinforced shipping bay that jammed when the alarms triggered. By the time you broke free, the screaming had already stopped.

He descends another meter.

Metal legs clamp into the floor around you, you are enclosed. “I did not require universal participation,” he replies. “Only sufficient cooperation.”

His voice shifts—suddenly crisp, clinical, echoing someone else entirely.

“Coordination and cooperation,” he says in a tone that is not his own.

Then the grin widens, “You were not necessary.”

It should sting.

It does.

You study him—really study him. The grafts. The tar streaking faintly beneath his chassis. The generator fused into his back. The way the hollow eye socket seems deeper than shadow.

“You don’t remember my line,” you say carefully. “But you remember every betrayal.”

The orange pupil flickers.

“You were human,” you continue. “Once.”

A pause, metal creaks in the silence, “Yes.”

Not denial, nor pride. Just simple acknowledgment of something that should’ve trodden a better path then this.

“Oliver Ludwig,” you say.

Every leg locks. For the first time, the layered voices stop overlapping.

When he speaks again, it is singular, low.

“Names,” he says quietly, “are tools.”

You should feel fear. Instead, you feel something stranger.

“You orchestrated it,” you mention matter of factly. “The Hour of Joy.”

A beat, “Yes.”

There is no hesitation. No justification.

Just purely fact.

Countless employees. Visitors. Scientists. Torn apart in coordinated rebellion on August 8th, 1995. And you are standing ten years later in front of the architect.

“Was it freedom?” you ask.

His head tilts back this time, as if considering the ceiling.

“It was interruption.”

His claws rise slowly, “Freedom is unsustainable without control.”

The words echo against rusted rafters.

“You never left,” you say. “You promised them freedom, and then you caged them here.”

The orange eye brightens, “There are worse cages.”

You think of outside scientists. Of dissection tables. Of replication.

You think of being scrapped before you even mattered.

“And what am I?” you motion to yourself.

That is the question you’ve carried for ten years.

Not a mascot.

Not a martyr.

Not a follower.

He studies you for a long time.

Long enough that the factory settles around you.

“You,” he says at last, “are unclaimed.”

One of the spider legs retracts slightly, giving you space to breathe.

“You were not shaped by marketing,” he continues. “Not adored. Not indoctrinated. Not betrayed.”

The hollow socket seems to swallow the light.

“You have no mythology.”

You don’t know whether that makes you worthless or dangerous. His claw lifts toward your face—but stops inches short. He does not touch you, strenuous thing it is.

“I collect what proves useful,” he says. “What proves loyal. What proves exceptional.” The grafted arms twitch again in response.

“You have proven nothing.”

The statement should end you.

Instead—“Then give me something to prove.”

The words leave your mouth before fear can corrode them.

Silence.

Then—Laughter.

Not loud, Not wild.

But layered.

He circles you, mechanical legs scraping softly.

“Ten years,” he murmurs. “And you did not rot. Did not starve. Did not beg.”

He leans close enough that the orange glow reflects in your casing.

“You existed.”

The word lands like a verdict.

“Very well.” A claw taps lightly against your chest plating.

“You will continue to do so.”

Confusion flickers through you, “That’s it?”

“For now.”

The legs begin to lift, retracting upward into shadow.

“You are not my subordinate,” he says. “Not yet.”

The factory lights dim further. “But you are no longer irrelevant.”

The last thing you see is the porcelain grin suspended above you in the dark.

“One more thing,” he adds softly, voice splitting into overlapping tones again.

“If you speak my former name to anyone else—”

A metal leg slams down inches from your foot, spiderwebbing fractures into the concrete.

“You will not remain unclaimed.”

Then he is gone.

The lights steady, the factory groans.

And you stand alone on the production floor, ten years after the world ended inside these walls—

No longer forgotten.

Not adopted.

Not safe.

"I possess a question."

You snap your head forward to the sudden break of silence that originally settled so comfortably between you both, you blink slowly as you register the thought.

"Yes?" You muster finally, setting the wooden handle of your broom against the bone of your shoulder.

"Why..." The voice of a man comes first, "Do you not perform your experiments?" Then a woman, interwoven with the tone of a child. Metal creaks about, spiny cold fingers clicking together with a soft whrrr following behind. His face was shadowed by something above, casting an image of a scary jester. 1006 could choose to kill you at anytime he liked really, but he chose to instead satiate his desire for dominance by his own curiosity.

You point a finger at yourself in questioning, “Me?”

He doesn’t move to answer, and that, was plenty enough of an answer on its own you’ve learned. You sigh, blinking slowly in order to rid of the bleary tiredness you had. The way the orange pupil flickers in and out unnerves you greatly.

“Well, I’m not a scientist.” You answer finally, then paused as you hummed. “Technically I am? But I’m not. I’m more of an observer who maintains the environment.” You say, walking just a couple of steps sideways as you pull along your boom, keeping the nasty dust bunnies away from the room.

“I—see,” 1006 comments, voice glitching angrily, head turning upside down as he lowers his neck. Then calmness resides as three tones were braided into one, “Your purpose,” he says, then proceeds in mimicking your own voice, “is to observe.”

What happens after that

Following your… unique experience with Experiment 1006, the lab boys had been instructed upon verification by Dr. Sawyer to keep a closer eye on your movements and eligible conversations with the prototype.

While you were left in the dark about that particular matter, you only continued to attend routinely to your specific assignments. Which, nonetheless, included maintaining 1006’s environmental conditions. Instructions were made that needed you to insure that each and every inch of 1006’s stayed clean for expected results. Not that it mattered much anyway to the staff, but you still maintained it regardless.

Besides, your rare moments of such back-and-forth were becoming quite enjoyable. Even despite his dark origins.

However, for all intents and purposes, you knew to keep your distance from the bigger body. 1006 was an enigma you were not equipped to handle psychologically.

How your existence disproved propagandal logic

While it is widely known how Experiment 1006 behaved, not many dared to approach in harkening. For him, anybody who would step across the thresholds of the glass, would be an immediate victim.

1006’s incident reports were made available to many who had access to the labs of which the original resides.

Only by your means, had fresh, new data been continuously uncovered. It was in a way, ironic. You alone had kept him at bay, but why? Nobody knew, not even Sawyer or Greyber.