A lowered stare does nothing to block the pressure of Clu's grasp, a possessive, rigid lock that soaks up the rough stutter of his noise. The slightest twitch and it would brush against his disk; a slide of fingers to access his dock's inputs directly. Rinzler stays perfectly, exactly still, and that does just as little to shield him from Clu's reply.

No. Clu doesn't want to. Clu won't give the option up. Clu lies, and Clu tests, and Clu has torn apart far more and better than Rinzler to keep the route to perfection clear. Still, the reach doesn't finish, the path doesn't close. And the order that comes next isn't one Rinzler is used to.

(Things cannot continue.)

Rinzler thinks. Rinzler remembers. Rinzler has never stopped thinking, never lost a single term's awareness of exactly what awaited him back home. Exactly what he'd expected from Clu here, when betrayal forced his own surrender. Command and correction; purge and reset; filters on filters, layered much too deeply for any concept of how empty they left him. Automation. Silence, suffocating and complete, and the constant cycling of punishment and loss as every query came back wrong.

He doesn't want it. He doesn't, he doesn't, he never did, and the tension coiled underneath Clu's hand draws to the edge of a collapse. Fingers jerk across the keys, a single I before they stall, stuttering and desperate. I, I, I. It's important. It's too much. Processing is fracturing to loops, a thousand strings snarled just at the edge of possibility, and Rinzler scrolls up with a jerky gesture to call the phrase again.

I don't want to go back.

No matter what. Not ever.