The parking lot was empty except for his car. A faded Fazbear Entertainment van sat near the back fence, probably left over from the investigation. Mike parked and walked to the entrance.
The office was easy enough to find. Flashlight on the desk. He took it. Behind it were lockers. He opened one and pulled out a purple vest, a matching hat, and a shiny badge.
The same uniform Jeremy would've worn. He shoved the thought aside. No time.
Key in his pocket. Tablet in hand.
Explore first. Settle in later.
Past the private party rooms, the hall opened into Parts and Service.
The older models stood inside, withered and broken. Freddy slumped forward, his suit torn open, wires spilling from his torso. Bonnie's face was gone entirely—only his lower jaw remained, hanging slack. Two dark, empty sockets stared out from where his face used to be. Chica leaned against the wall, her beak cracked, bib stained and frayed. Both arms ended in tangles of bare wire where her hands should have been. Foxy stood rigid in the corner, hook raised, some fur missing, teeth permanently bared.
The room smelled like old grease and something worse. Mike stood in the doorway, letting the silence stretch. Waiting for one of them to twitch. None did.
The originals. The ones that had been there when the kids went missing. If souls were trapped in metal, they'd be here.
He checked the cameras as he walked. One feed: the music box. He tested it remotely. The gauge rose. Good. At least that worked.
His footsteps echoed through the halls. At the stage, closed curtains hid the Toy animatronics—colorful silhouettes, motionless.
A noise echoed. His grip tightened on the flashlight.
They were moving. Time to get back.
He sank into the chair and started scanning. Static flicker. Hallways empty and dim.
Most of them were moving now. Creaks. Shuffles. Footsteps echoing where the halls had been still.
He checked the music box gauge constantly, tapping the control every few moments to keep it wound. Tinny, distorted music—a broken lullaby that wouldn't stop looping.
They were all moving now.
Toy Bonnie in the left vent. Toy Chica in the right. He flipped through feeds—Main Hall, Party Rooms, both vents, Prize Corner.
Music box. Wind. Check vents. Check hall. Repeat.
The pattern settled into a rhythm. Manageable. Constant, but manageable.
Toy Bonnie in the office. Mask on. Vision narrowed to eyeholes. Mechanical whirring, close. Footsteps retreating. Mask off.
The first hour crawled by. He kept pace.
The music box gauge dipped into the red. He'd been watching the vents. Missed it. His thumb jabbed the control—the music stuttered, then resumed, tinny and strained. Somewhere down the hall, he swore he heard the creak of a lid lifting.
Then nothing.
The gauge climbed back to safety.
Activity picked up. Toy Chica in the office. Mask on. Wait. Off.
He flipped through cameras—vents, music box, wind. Lowered the tablet. Withered Freddy stood in front of him.
Mask on, one smooth motion. Heavy, mechanical breathing just feet away. He sat still. Waited a few extra seconds, then pulled the mask off.
Withered Foxy in the hallway, motionless. Hook raised. Jaw hanging. His eyes fixed on the office. The flashlight was in his hand. He aimed, clicked it on. The beam caught Foxy's mangled frame.
Foxy's head snapped aside, metal grinding. He turned and stalked toward Parts & Service, the sound of his steps fading. Mike lowered the flashlight.
The rhythm continued. Toy Bonnie, Toy Chica, Withered Chica. Mask on, off, on, off. Flash the hall. Wind the box. Close calls, but handling it.
Four hours down.
Right vent camera. Mangle's twisted frame filled the feed—wires trailing, two heads twitching at different angles. He filed it away and flipped to the music box. The gauge was low. Critically low.
He wound it, eyes on the Prize Corner feed. Office check. Empty. Good. Back to vents. Right vent— Empty. He looked up. Mangle hung from the ceiling, body suspended by wires, both heads aimed downward. Metal joints clicked. One head's jaw slack, the other twitching erratically. From somewhere in her broken frame, her damaged voice box emitted a grating, relentless static.
Mask on. Mangle didn't move. He waited. Still nothing. Mask off, slow. Mangle stayed suspended, twitching, watching. Wasn't leaving.
Back to the cameras. She could attack any moment—he knew that. Nothing to do. The mask didn't work on her. She was just... there. Waiting.
He kept working. Music box. Vents. Hall. Mangle hung above him, a threat he couldn't remove.
Toy Freddy in the office. Mask on. Slow, mechanical breathing. Footsteps retreating. Off.
Back to cameras. Music box. Wind. Left vent—Withered Bonnie. Right vent—Withered Chica. Toy Bonnie. Mask on. Off. Relentless now. Something new every few seconds.
Withered Foxy in the hallway. Flashlight. Aim. Beam caught his frame. Foxy's head snapped aside, and he stalked back toward Parts & Service. Mike lowered the light and went back to the cameras.
The building was closing in. Mangle above him, twitching, both heads aimed downward.
Mangle's broken voice box blared overhead, a wall of static that drowned out everything else. The noise drilled into his skull, made it hard to track the camera feeds. He shook his head once, twice. Blinked the blur from his vision. Focus.
He flipped back to the cameras—music box, vents, focus. Didn't hear the faint scrape of metal on tile as a small figure crawled in from the left vent and settled in the corner.
5:58 AM. He looked up from the tablet. Withered Foxy in the hallway. Hook raised. Jaw hanging. Staring directly at him.
He grabbed the flashlight. Click. Nothing. Click. Dead.
His eyes snapped to the corner. Balloon Boy stood there, batteries in his hand, grinning. "Hi! Hello!" When did he—? No light. Foxy was still in the hallway.
He looked back. Foxy hadn't moved. But he knew Foxy's behavior—aggressive, relentless. Without the light, seconds. Maybe less.
He sat still, watching Foxy through the darkness. His eyes gleamed.
5:59 AM. Foxy took a step forward. His hand tightened on the useless flashlight. Another step. Balloon Boy giggled from the corner. He wound the music box one more time, eyes on Foxy. Mangle's voice box crackled louder—a shrieking static. Another step. Closer. Foxy raised his hook.
Mike's watch beeped. 6:00 AM.
Foxy's hook hung in the air, inches from his face. The animatronic shuddered—once—then went still.
The building fell silent. Music box winding down. Static cutting out. Mangle's heads drooping.
Mike didn't move. Just sat there, staring at the hook, waiting for it to swing.
The silence stretched. One second. Two.
The day-programming. That's what this was. The machines locking down, returning to their stages. Whatever had been driving them all night—free-roam mode, so the company said—just ended.
Then Foxy's eye flickered.
The hook twitched.
The servos groaned, straining against themselves. The building hummed again—not the clean, routine power-up of the day shift, but something rougher. The souls inside the metal weren't bound by programming. They never had been. The machines wanted to sleep. The children inside them refused.
Foxy's jaw snapped wider.