Sometimes, before Martin had been broken, his big brother Phil would leave him in a place like this.
Sometimes, if he was lucky, if Charlotte could coax him into mustering up the strength to go get help, and the guard was nice, he could be walked home.
Of course, the guard could brush him off. Or he wouldn't be strong enough. And he would just hide under the table and cry, and nothing that Charlotte could say would give him the courage to get up.
From the vent, Martin peeped into the office, and was met with a horrifying site:
Freddy, peering down at him, without eyes.
It was like deja vu, except way back before, it had been the mask of a fierce pirate fox.
But either way...
The mask.
No eyes.
Freddy with no eyes.
Freddy as he shouldn't be, with no eyes.
No eyes.
A human body.
If Martin could still shed tears, his eyes would have filled with them, but as it was his new body didn't betray him. He left the vent. And he moved, as fast as his little legs could carry him, back to the game corner. Past the party room. Past the stage. Back to the game corner.
Jeremy pulled the mask off and checked the vent. The smallest one of Them was gone. He wasn't sure what he could do to him if he let him in, but it was better to not try to find out.
Jeremy stopped in his nonstop survival mode to allow a small breath of relief that the mask worked on most of Them. Then he got angry, angry that it would not work on all of Them. He wasn't angry at anybody, in particular, he just wished it would work on all of Them.
So he could live.
There was only one other animatronic whom Jeremy's mask would not fool. Jeremy had seen this one for himself, glaring at him from down the hall. A discarded fox model. With his gaping maw full of sharp teeth, his tattered appearance, and those glowing eyes, he looked positively intimidating.
He also moved very fast.
Fortunately, his telephone instructor had not let him down in that respect either. The phone guy had said that all the animatronics were temporarily frozen by the light's beam, like a deer in the headlights.
There was no deer animatronic. That Jeremy knew of.
Jeremy repressed a shiver. How utterly loathsome it would be to have another new creature to fend off! And he knew that They had nothing but unpleasant plans for him.
Jeremy knew his life was at stake.
Jeremy just knew. Jeremy was good at reading the subtext.
What wasn't subtext was how horribly helpless he felt.