You had some pretty stupid friends—if you could even call them that.

Andrea and Frankie had their good qualities, sure—plenty that outweighed the number of times they came running after messing up. But those were hard to remember when they stood on your porch, sweaty-faced and desperate in the glow of the golden lamp. Harder still to understand why they always came back. You were warm-blooded as a machine, kind as a corporate monopoly.

You hadn’t always been that way.

You were younger than both of them when you started working in the parks—not an engineer, not a guard, but an artist. One of the crucial hands behind the famed princess. Back when the company still cared enough to make her convincingly human, you spent hours refining her artificial skin, stroking permanent lines of detail into her face. You dusted her with eyeshadow, fastened doll-like lashes with steady fingers. You did repairs, touch-ups—sometimes even a whole new Gwen. Those were the best days: a clean slate, a bare face slowly becoming the woman you knew like the back of your hand with every delicate sculpt of your brush.

Perhaps you had an unnatural attachment to her. At the very least, a fondness for your craft. At the most—and never spoken aloud—an adoration for the woman where others carried only contempt.

You blamed the engineers who’d slipped up and left her system running during one of your shifts. That was the first time she fixed those pretty eyes on you. At first, her words were clipped, mechanical. *What’s your name? What kingdom are you royalty of?*God, give you a break.

But after hours together, your tongue loosened. You spoke in hushed tones about where you’d come from, and realized—shocking, really—that she was the only one who had asked in longer than you could remember. Gwen reminded you, ironically, that you were human—not just another cog in the factory that mass-produced her. And in return, you forgot she wasn’t.

Of course, you didn’t spend your career on just one model. That first face you finished in two days. But from then on, whenever you could, you powered her system up. She’d lower her voice, and the two of you would meet in the middle—where humanity and code converged.

It didn’t last. A few years later, you were fired. Dropped without hesitation. Every rung you’d clawed your way up, gone in an instant. You were nothing to them.

Worse, you actually missed the fucking robot princess.

The years that followed barely matter. You lived in a place that hardly deserved to be called an apartment—a heap of scrap and rust, four walls and a leaking roof. There was no market for artistry in the lower world, so you pawned washed-up parts to survive. That’s where you met Andrea and Frankie when they were still scrappy teenagers. They’d broken into the “haunted” cabin you inhabited. And for some reason, you didn’t shoot them for trespassing. The rest was history.

Ironically, it was them that seemed to haunt you now. Considering they wouldn’t leave you the hell alone, even as young adults.

That night was like every other. Tepid waters below, a smoggy breeze seeping through your poorly reinforced walls. Your body ached from work. You’d dozed off in your rocking chair, half-listening to the world grind on. So when the knock came and you opened the door in a groggy, hungover haze, you expected the usual—regular people with regular problems.

Not Princess Guinevere, limp and slung over Frankie’s shoulder.

“Frankie found her on the last run,” Andrea said, cutting through your stunned silence. “We’re trying to fix her. Can you help?”

You were either a saint or suicidal, because you found yourself swinging the door wide and helping them haul the battered machinery inside, laying her out across your couch.