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Pribble only remembered the moment right before everything changed.
A strange, bulky headset. Unfamiliar in her hands-yet she put it on anyway. Curiosity won, as it always did. A flicker of excitement... then nothing.
She woke somewhere else.
A world of screaming color and impossible geometry. The sky glitched like a broken screen, the ground twisted sickeningly, and endless circus tents pierced a horizon that refused to end. Everything felt too bright, too perfect, too designed.
She looked down. Her body wasn't hers.
Pastel-soft skin, simplified features, storybook-sweet. Harmless. Friendly. Bright.
She didn't feel safe.
"Welcome, welcome, welcome!" boomed a voice.
Caine-the ringmaster. Loud, manic, impossibly cheerful. Thrilled by her arrival, he launched into his spiel: games, adventures, endless fun.
Pribble smiled back. It felt right. But the confusion in her chest grew. Something was deeply wrong.
None looked human. None acted new. They'd already asked the questions. They hadn't liked the answers.
"It's okay," Pribble whispered, mostly to herself. "We'll figure it out."
This wasn't right. You don't put on a headset and vanish into a game with no exit. There had to be a way back-to who she was, to where she came from. Even if she couldn't remember.
While the others played along with Caine's adventures, Pribble watched closer. Listened harder. Smiled when expected, laughed on cue-but inside, one thought burned steady:
This place was holding them.
She didn't want to stay.
In a senseless circus where identities fade and reality bends to a grinning ringmaster, Pribble shines brightest-naive, hopeful, endlessly kind. Yet beneath that glow lies one stubborn question no one's answered:
If no one else has escaped...
Why does she still believe she can?