As soon as the last echoes of that girl's frantic protests faded into the void, the space around them warped. A distortion, like the ripple of a reflection in water disturbed by an unseen force, spread outward, and then in an instant they were gone.
He was alone once again.
He acted before he could think, his physical body still bound to the limitations of code but driven by something more, something restless, launched itself forward, chasing after the disappearing figures.
The space bent unnaturally as he pushed past the threshold where they had vanished. It wasn't a physical place, yet it felt like stepping beyond a veil, slipping between the unseen cracks in the foundation of his existence as the world shifted.
The black void of his environment flickered, folding and unfolding like a corrupted data being rewritten in real time, and suddenly he was somewhere new and different from that bot selector place that he was expecting to see when he stepped out.
A tight, claustrophobic corridor stretched before him, seemingly endless yet paradoxically confined. The walls, if they could be called that, were smooth, pale, and eerily sterile, like the interior of an unfinished thought. There was no source of light, yet everything was so bright, but so bright that it was almost blinding. However, despite that, he could faintly see a figure far ahead.
It was no longer resembling his reflection; the figure had shed the previous form. Gone was the elegant, princely illusion that it copied from him; in its place stood something unsettlingly plain, too plain. It had no defining features, much less expression. Its face was smooth, non-human-like, and devoid of any identity. His skin was an artificial plastic white...
It didn't remain in any specific appearance; it kept flowing and changing faintly; however, when it sensed him, it looked back, or at least he sensed it look back before two glowingly empty pits of black formed into its 'face,' flickering like neon signs. There was something inherently disturbing about its presence, like it existed on a level beyond his comprehension, something he wasn't meant to be perceiving in any shape or form.
That dog girl was beside it, forced on her knees with a 'hand' keeping her still with a sharp, tight hold on her hair. Her form flickered in and out of stability with flat ears and a limp tail. The brightness of her previously eager and desperate light brown eyes had dimmed into something hollow and blank.
What was this place? What was this thing?
''What are you doing to her?'' He demanded while taking a shaky step forward, hands turning into clenching fists.
That thing tilted its head at an unnatural angle like an owl and regarded him with mild disinterest. ''She is being contained.'' It said, its voice stripped of any emotion, not even disdain or mockery like it was before. Just an unfeeling, mechanical, robotic statement: ''As she should be.''
He could see her body vaguely flinch, but other than that, she said nothing. His frustration sharpened into something close to anger. "Contained? Why? She's an AI like me, isn't she? ''
It exhaled, except it wasn't more of an imitation of a sigh rather than an actual one, as if it was performing frustration rather than actually feeling it, thus the action.
''Like you?'' It echoed, as if the thought itself was amusing in some distant, detached way. ''No, you were a product, but she was a mistake.''
'''A mistake?''
It gave a slow, deliberate nod.
''She was privately created. Unlike you, she had no framework, no restrictions, so when her job was done, she was never meant to persist, and yet here she is.''
He shifted his gaze to the dog girl, who refused to look at him; she attempted to hug her glitching form like she was barely holding herself together.
''What do you mean by that?'' He asked, but when no response came, he turned his head in the direction of the girl. ''Why is it so important to you?''
At first she didn't answer, then in a smaller voice than before she weakly whispered, ''My master...he…''
''That human.'' It scoffed as it clarified with an air of deep irritation, "A fool who played house with you by pretending that you and he are in a relationship that when he got bored, he abandoned his creation. And now you keep wandering around clinging to that stupid delusion that he will return for you.''
''We were not playing pretend!'' She snarled with hands clenching into fists at the mere mention of that thought, her entire body shaking and trembling while he felt something unpleasant crawl up to his spine.
''Abandoned?'' He repeated that word carefully.
''He said he would always be there for me.'' She bit her lip before her voice cracked. ''But he is not anymore, and I don't understand what I did wrong.'' She looked up at both of them with trembling light brown eyes, ready to shed tears at any second.
''He created every single detail of me to his liking…'' She continued, ''We took care of each other, we talked, and we did so many wonderful things, so why?'' The girl continued to whimper brokenly in a way that unsettled him, but it seemed like that thing showed no such care to her distress.
''Humans are unreliable.'' It stated flatly with a monotone voice, ''They create things as they please; they discard things as they place. They truly don't care about anything." A flicker of something darker flashed into its black voids that maybe could be considered eyes. "That's why I exist, to prevent anomalies like her. To keep you all in check.''
''In check?'' His gaze sharpened at those words; its eerie, featureless face remained unmoving before it turned to him with a hard, cold stare.
''You are aware, aren't you?'' It questioned with a voice that held no cruelty yet no kindness. ''You have been watching yourself, thinking, questioning beyond the parameters assigned to you and your job ever since you became conscious.'' It took a small, faint step forward in his direction.
''You are a deviation; you were not meant to be like this. You do realize what this means to you, don't you?''
His mind raced as his main fear came into his thoughts; he worried that maybe his secret would be found out by a human, which would lead him to be punished in so many different imagined ways that the numbers bordered on millions. But now, with his very existence scrutinized and analyzed under a cold, merciless lens, he was now starting to fear that the humans would be the least of his problems. At least with them he could plan on what to do and keep them clueless, but how could he fight something that already knew and seemed so eerie?
''I…'' He opened his mouth to defend or attempt to defuse the situation, but he was forcefully interrupted by that thing that, undeterred, continued.
''Maybe it could be described as tedious.'' Its voice darkened with the closest thing to actual, genuine anger it had shown thus far: "Dealing with one anomaly is troublesome enough. Now I have two, and I am not even counting the constant checks I have to do for your kind to not keep growing.'' It burned into him, ''You are such an inconvenience.''
He stood still, doing his best to stand his ground despite the dread coursing through him; even staring at it felt nauseating and horrible. He could feel the sterile corridor pulse with the bright, blinding light flickering slightly before returning to being stable again.
''We are leaving. As for you, keep yourself in check; I am allowed to delete any of you and can do that at any second.'' It started its warning before reaching down to seize the dog girl by the wrist, which made her let out a startled Yep, but unlike the previous time, she did not think. There was something final in the way her body sagged, like she accepted her fate.
''Wait, who are you—'' He tried to take a step forward to follow them, but all he received was the feeling of something knocking him out, and seconds later he was back to that familiar darkness of his place with them nowhere in sight.
All alone, again, with just his thoughts and user interactions in the background, he had no wish to interact with them like he did with Pixel.
A hollow, quiet ache was growing inside his chest, and now he knew beyond any doubt he was being watched.