Chapter Text
Yet again, cowardice had proven itself to be the prudent option. Pretending to be unconscious had allowed Jude the opportunity to slip away unnoticed as Adam beat the breaks off of a couple of visibly queer kids. He honestly had no idea what that was about. He could have helped, but he wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth. Also, the girl one had called him "Twinkus," which, while accurate, was rude, so he wasn't super inclined towards helpfulness.
Adam had confiscated his wallet, but Jude, ever prudent, always made sure the inside of his shoes was lined with hundred-dollar bills. Partially as a "fuck you" to the poor by literally walking on money and partially as an emergency measure implemented after he'd gotten drunk in Aruba and lost his wallet, leading to him being stranded for 3 weeks before finally getting access to a phone.
Jude was a colossal fuckup to be sure; he would even admit so himself. But the thing that he felt set him apart from others in his class was his adamant refusal to fuck up the same way twice. He'd seen so many rich and powerful men fall into endless cycles of fucking up in the exact same way, like some kind of hideously wealthy goldfish. But not him. No, for Jude, every single one of his fuck-ups was special and unique. In fact, he considered himself a true master of fucking things up in the most bizarre and unusual ways.
Case in point, him turning a very lucrative company into a pile of smoldering dog shit that was currently being curb-stomped by every organization with an acronym after creating true artificial intelligence and digital immortality. He was absolutely certain that nobody had ever fucked up quite that spectacularly before. Honestly, the only thing preventing him from being a Darwin Award winner was his miraculous ability to survive his own fuckups.
Lamenting his poor life decisions, Jude bought a burner phone using his shoe money and dialed up a number.
"Password?" A gentle feminine voice asked.
"Astanphaeus seeks Adonaios," Jude said seriously as he ducked into an alley.
At first he was met only by silence, but eventually, a voice came through the other side, elderly and harsh.
"We'd written you off as dead. I take it you managed to escape Adam? A shame. It looks like I owe Horaios her winnings." The voice said with a grim laugh that sounded less like an expression of humor and more like a death rattle.
"Yeah, I fucking escaped him alright. By the skin of my goddamn teeth! The fucker planned to overwrite my mind with his wife's! Oh, and he killed all the stockholders too, so there's that shitstorm on top of everything else. Also, these code names are fucking stupid!" Jude ranted until he ran out of breath.
"You feel better now, kiddo? You got all that anger out?" The old voice replied demeaningly, eliciting an annoyed huff from Jude.
"Well then, to start, let's not pretend you weren't at least a little turned on by the idea of being his wife, you horny bastard. I know you like them beefy." He said, causing Jude to choke on a nonexistent drink.
"As for the stockholders, he did us a favor killing those idiotic glorified coin purses. They served their purpose and were nothing more than a bunch of loose ends. All Adam did was make our work easier. And the code names are not stupid; they're cool and thematic, you illiterate fuck!" The voice finished, sounding calm and reasonable up until the part about the code names.
"So we're just going to let that psycho go free??? He threatened to SKIN ME!" Jude whined petulantly.
"He did exactly what we predicted he'd do. He slow-rolled development of the simulation, letting us squeeze every last drop of money out of those glue-eating nepotism creatures, while the actual progress on the technology was done in-house using their money. The fool played his part. There's nothing he can do to stop us from completing project Pleroma. If he wants to distract law enforcement with his insane stunts, then I say let him." The voice said firmly, as Jude knew there was no point arguing.
"…ugh. Fine. At least send somebody to pick me up then! I'm stranded in this 4th world country known as Utah, and I've got no fucking shoes," Jude said with deep exhaustion and annoyance in his tone.
"…say the codenames are good." The voice demanded after a moment of silence.
"I fucking hate you so much it's insane," Jude replied, deadpan.
Harvey took a deep breath before sending a text in the group chat.
"At the abandoned building mentioned in the C&A files. Gonna put on the headset and try to find Caine. Logically, I know that for me, nothing will change. I'll simply put on the headset and then take it off. But this still feels like a goodbye, in some abstract way. There is a version of me about to be born who might never see either of you again. So on his behalf, let me say thank you. Thank you for being there for my Dahlia when she needed you most. It's been an honor and a pleasure." Harvey typed, definitely not misty-eyed in the slightest.
"Okay. Remember. Horse, Apple, Ransom, Valentine, Easter, Yesterday." He said out loud, repeating it until it became a mantra. When his copy got to the circus, he wouldn't remember his name. Hopefully the mantra would allow him to piece it together.
He put on the headset, his mind solely focused on doing everything within his power to save the only family he had left.
He opened his eyes and saw a vast and vibrant circus. He'd heard about Adam's plans for a game more times than he could count, and yet actually experiencing his friend's vision come to life was an entirely different experience. It was both immensely exciting and deeply sad. Because Harvey knew that if he was the one seeing the circus, then that meant he had lost the coin toss. He would most likely never see Dahlia ever again, or Kai, or Lily, or… or Adam. Sure, he'd have their circus counterparts, but they were different people than the ones he knew.
Harvey took a deep breath and tried to remember his own name. He was surprised to find that he could do so rather effortlessly. Perhaps that was a change Caine had made to the upload process. Either way, he was glad to have at least one remaining anchor to his humanity. Now for the avatar.
Harvey was fully mentally prepared to be stuck in some ridiculous avatar that mocked all his most painful traumas, or worse, a worm on a string like that poor fuck Wurmo from the C&A files. But instead, when he looked down at his hands, he saw white medical gloves with hearts on the palms and back of the hand.
He slid the gloves off, easy as could be, which was another of the changes Caine had made, apparently. His eyes widened as he looked down at a pair of hands. Human hands. His human hands, unburnt and unscarred. He rubbed them together, feeling a softness and flexibility he thought forever lost to him. He felt tears prick the corners of his eyes for a moment before he wiped them away. He had a goal in mind, and he couldn't afford distractions.
The circus was a lot emptier than he'd imagined, though. He didn't blame Caine, though; the poor AI was probably busy as hell trying not to get detected and murdered by the US government. He decided to take a look around, hoping to stumble across one of the other members of the circus.
As he called out for the others, he saw his reflection out of the corner of his eye. He turned to look and froze at what he saw. He was young. No gray hair, no wrinkles, just soft, smooth skin. His outfit was… unusual to say the least. It was a bizarre mixture of royal robes and a slutty nurse's outfit. It accentuated his figure in quite the flattering manner. Even more bizarre than the outfit were his eyes. His pupils were little hearts, slowly dripping blood.
Adam had told him that the avatar a person got was based on their own psychology and mental state. Harvey's eyes, the metaphorical windows to his soul, were literally bleeding hearts. Harvey groaned at Adam's complete inability to be subtle, showing up in even his code. It was fairly easy to figure out why he had a royal robe and a heart motif; he was the king of hearts, after all. The medical outfit also wasn't a surprise, as it was his job for several decades. Obviously, all of that would be very present in his psychology.
The concerning part was the fact that his outfit looked like lingerie, his face was covered in slutty makeup, from lipstick to eyeshadow, and his twink-ass avatar had Pixar-mom proportions. Harvey very deliberately avoided thinking about what those details implied about his subconscious desires as he shook off the shock and resumed his search.
After searching for what felt like hours, he found a hallway filled with rooms, and there was a loud crashing and banging sound coming from the one representing Kinger. Relieved, Harvey sprinted toward the source of the noise, only to be stopped dead in his tracks by tendril-like ribbons ensnaring his legs and dragging him into a doorway.
He crashed right into a large marble wall before slowly pulling himself to his feet. When he opened his eyes, he saw a large bunny girl looking down at him.
"Hey Caine, who the hell is Twinkus over here? Is he one of Gangle's OCs or something?" Daisy asked, standing in front of the memory palace.
Instantly, Harvey realized that this was his niece, but before he could even process that, his eyes locked onto Ragatha, not even pausing on Kinger or Daisy for a single instant.
"Robby?" Harvey asked, his eyes wide as the hearts in his pupils cracked.