5

It was business as usual over the next few days at Rockstar Pizza. The music played, the animatronics danced and sang their songs, and family after family came and went with their children looking on in awe at the entirety of the restaurant. The only thing that made it less than perfect was the noticeable absence of Lefty, the missing Rockstar animatronic whose single stage sat empty in the far left corner of the room, reminiscent of Foxy from the old restaurant who was always out of order.

The usual trucks arrived daily with their deliveries carrying their usual stocks of merchandise and bulk pizza ingredients which Mike checked in and oversaw, and Tim was spending more time engrossed in the role of being the manager rather than simply enjoying the perks of being one, the reality of the position bringing on stresses that he wasn't quite ready for. Aside from that, everything was working well and there were no incidents.

The delivery of the mangled Funtime animatronic still cast a shadow over Mike's experience working at the restaurant, and he was always sure to not step too close to the boarded up crate containing it that sat against the wall of the storeroom. His unease of the thing had not been lessened by Tim's news that the crate was due to be collected and taken away to head office by the same truck that was delivering another asset to them.

"Okay, so I just heard back from the big guys," Tim said to Mike, standing in the security office doorway with his shirt untucked and his hair unkempt, his suit jacket long ago discarded in the warm weather. "They're sending us another animatronic tonight and we have to do the audio check on it. The ones that respond, we mark with a tick for the engineer to check over later, and he will repack it to send back out."

"What about the ones that don't respond?" asked Mike, dreading the idea of multiple old animatronics being stored in the room just next to his.

"Those ones, we keep. The engineer is in touch with head office and he'll come and go accordingly." His eyes widened as he just remembered an important detail. "Oh, yeah. We'll have to give him the security code to the building. Something about him having a busy schedule and only being available to work after hours."

"So, we keep them for him to work on? How many are coming?"

"Man, I don't know… so far we can expect one or two crates coming in each week. Anyway, I have to get back to my office. See if my e-mails have been responded to yet."

The next crate arrived the following night and Mike was glad to not be alone for its receival as the truck reversed up to the roller door, Tim standing excitedly by his side. They signed for and checked over the new crate and brought over the old one marked with the tick for the driver to load onto his truck. Though the mangled Funtime Freddy was gone, locked in the crate that he watched disappear into the back of the truck, Mike did not feel any better about it. It had made him feel sick, and the sickness wasn't leaving even as the crate was being sent away. The truck left and he closed the roller door, set the alarm, then turned to face his next task.

He and Tim opened the new crate and again watched the soft white foam balls cascade out of it from the top down, revealing a blue rabbit animatronic. It was Bonnie, but not the classic one that the Rockstar on the stage was based on. This one was smaller and sleeker and was part of the redesign that was done for the grand re-opening of 1987—but it had only been used for a few months before the restaurant was shut down. Tim played the three audio files to it and both men watched it closely for any reaction to the stimuli. They detected no movement from it and even played the files for it again, but it remained motionless in its crate, only grinning and staring into the nothingness. It was well and truly inactive, with no dormant program running in the background waiting for the right cue.

With the inspection over, Tim hammered the lid back on and marked it with a cross. This character would be staying in the storeroom for further use, either for dismantling or to be sold. They said their goodbyes and Tim left the place in a hurry, not hanging back to chat. Mike went through the building, double-checking the roller door and the exit next to it, then locking and checking the door to the hallway. He was in his office about to shut down his computer when he was suddenly overcome with a sense of impending doom, his stomach dropping and feeling like ice. Nothing around him had changed, not even a sound but he found himself rooted to the spot, standing behind his desk, absolutely certain that he was in imminent danger. His senses heightened, he stood still and watched his office door for any movement behind the glass.

He wasn't alone. He was sure of it. His computer still on, he opened the camera feeds and checked each room, every angle, and lingered on the camera that looked down the hallway outside. Everywhere was empty. Moving slowly, trying not to make any noise—not even the ruffling of his clothes—Mike leaned forwards to shut the computer down, acutely aware of its quiet whirring as it stopped. He crept towards his door when the hairs stood up on the back of his neck and he turned around to face his room. The vent. A sound had just come from the vent.

Mike stared up at the small grate covering in the far corner of the security office with an intense feeling that there was someone else in the building, one who was very aware that he was alone. The sound he heard was a quiet, metallic scrape followed by a muffled giggle. It sounded vaguely like a clown laugh with a cartoonish quality to it. It had echoed down the vents from an unknown source in the building and, standing there with his hand gripping the doorknob, Mike strained his ears as he listened out for it again. None came, and Mike finally worked up the courage to open his office door and leave.

He quietly closed the door, gently letting the latch slide into place, and then crept down the narrow hallway, glad that it was carpeted. Though he was being as quiet as he could be, Mike couldn't shake the feeling that there were eyes on him, ones that were watching his every movement through the walls as he walked. He closely watched every vent he saw as if he might catch a pair of glinting eyes just behind the slits, though he knew that realistically nothing larger than a rat could fit in the space behind it.

The storeroom was empty. He was sure of it. His duty to his job told him to go back and check every nook and cranny of the building before leaving. His will to get home as fast as possible told him to feign ignorance and leave. After all, he had checked the cameras. Everyone was gone. Even the mangled animatronic that had affected him as soon as he saw it was gone. He watched it being loaded up onto the truck himself only an hour ago. Only one inactive animatronic was back there, sitting in its crate that was nailed shut. So, why was the feeling still lingering?

Mike walked as swiftly and as light-footed as he could across the echoing, tiled floor. The four Rockstar animatronics seemed to watch him as he made his way across to the main entrance. He stopped just a few steps away from the front door. There it was again. A metallic sound, almost like a thud followed by a drag. It sounded like it came from the stage. Mike grabbed his flashlight and aimed it at the characters, the broad beam engulfing all of them in its circle. Nothing had moved, nothing was out of place, but the feeling that something was watching him was coming from that direction.

Mike swallowed. It was late. He was tired. He was hearing things and he was just getting spooked by the familiar appearance of the animatronics. He kept reminding himself that these ones weren't the same ones as before. They had never moved around at night, never looked at him directly, never even had a malfunction. With a deep breath, Mike pushed the door open and stepped through it into the warm night air. He locked the doors and set the alarm, then walked away towards his car with the knowledge that if someone were in the building, the alarm would be sounding soon enough.

-xxx-

It was not a once-off. On most nights at the restaurant, after the majority of the staff had left, Mike would hear the quiet sounds within the walls, a movement from the vent, and at the very least would be overcome with the intense feeling that something was watching him. Tim, noticeably, was leaving his office earlier in the evenings, when the red sun was pouring in through the windows into the dining room, and he seemed to be almost in a hurry to do so. Even the cleaner, whom Mike watched on the cameras, would occasionally pause in his tasks to stop and look around in the direction of the stage as though he had heard something. The only nights that Tim stayed back as late as Mike was when a delivery from the sister location was due to arrive.

So far, two more characters from Afton Robotics had arrived at the back room. Joining the Bonnie animatronic that had arrived previously and completing the set from that range were Freddy and Chica. All three were of the same newer, sleeker 'toy' design that had been barely used, even in their heyday. None of them had responded to the audio tests and were now sitting in the back room stored away by the engineer for future use. Their crates now gone, dismantled and removed by the engineer, the three animatronics sat slumped against the wall, always making Mike flinch slightly whenever he walked in there. Tim was happy with their condition and had remarked to Mike about his ideas and personal plans for their use.

"So apparently, these guys were the most high-tech of their time. Probably still are, compared to the other stuff we've got here. They used to walk around serving the customers pizza between songs and they'd interact with the kids really well. I'd love to get them out there giving the staff a run for their money, but head office says that we are strictly old-school. The public is not fond of animatronics that can leave the stage and wander the place. I guess some memories never fade."

Mike knew of what Tim was talking about. At the tail-end of the tragedy of '87 came another incident known as The Bite. The animatronics were all tied into the police database and could be used as their own surveillance and protection if need be. After the four children went missing from the restaurant, one of the characters attacked a security guard after they all had seemed to have taken a special interest in him. The man in question, Jeremy Fitzgerald, had only worked one week of night shifts and wasn't even present when the children went missing, so it was believed that the animatronics were tampered with. The attack happened during the day in full view of the public as Jeremy walked towards the office to start his first day shift. Since then, all Fazbear animatronics were restricted to the stage.

Each night, before closing up, Mike would do a round of the restaurant and make sure everything was locked and put away. Tim would sometimes be in his office managing the books with a stressed look on his face and the cleaner would be pushing his trolley around the dining room, mopping the floor after putting all of the chairs upside down on the long tables. Each night, Mike would go into the storage room and make sure the roller door was closed and the alarm was active, then he would do a lap up and down the room while listening out for any noise. Hoping that the sounds he heard were just rats, Mike regularly checked the bait stations in the corners of the rooms, but each search revealed nothing. He gave the three 'toy' animatronics a wide berth as he walked past them, never taking his eye off them as they stared at the shelves in front of them, their wide smiles gleaming.

Despite his searches of the back storeroom, Mike often heard minor disturbances from behind the wall once everyone had left and the building had gone silent. The feed to the back room was still just a black screen with no audio or picture and he had requested it to be fixed several times now, but each time his concerns seemed to fall on deaf ears. He was always told not to worry about it and that the customers in the dining room were his responsibility.

One night Mike had had enough of it and after hearing a particularly distinct sound of quick shuffling, he went out into the storeroom and switched the light on. Heart pounding, adrenaline keeping him on edge and in full security guard mode, he yelled out into the long, narrow room for whoever was there to come out. Only silence responded to him. He took a few slow steps further along the room until he was near the three animatronics that stood against the wall on his left.

"What about you guys?" Mike asked them, briefly shining his flashlight on them. "Did you hear anything, or is it all just in my head?"

He looked up and down the storeroom until his light landed on the security camera in the top corner just above the roller door and had an idea.

"Screw this…"

Grabbing the nearest stool, Mike dragged it under the camera and stood up on it. If he was just hearing things, he wanted to be able to tell with the click of a button and an image on his computer screen if it was worth worrying about or not. Reaching up, he strained to reach the camera but was able to grab it. With his flashlight in one hand, he inspected it to see if there was anything obviously wrong with it. He found a wire at the back and pulled it out, then plugged it in again. The red light had dimmed and turned back on, so to Mike's limited knowledge, it should be working.

The entire time Mike was there, he felt a dull need to look over his shoulder and caught himself stopping what he was doing to listen to the empty room. With the wire plugged back in, he stepped down and put the stool back where he got it from and quickly left the room, locked it, and closed up the building for the night. This one act of curiosity would land him in trouble the next morning when he awoke early to an angry phone call from Tim.

"Remind me, Mike. What was the official reason you were let go from Freddy's?"

"What…? Uh, tampering with the electr—"

"Tampering with the electronics! That's right! And just what the hell were you doing last night at 11:45pm last night?"

"I was trying to fix the—"

"I don't care! I just got an angry call from head office—they are furious! If they look into your history with Freddy's, it's both of us getting canned! I vouched for you, remember?"

Mike could understand why he was under fire for checking the security camera, but he didn't understand how anyone knew what he was doing last night. He was the only person there. He was given an official warning and the matter never came up again and Mike never inspected the back camera again, though the black square in the corner of his screen was a constant reminder that he was blind to anything that happened in that room.

The days went on, and some nights there were no sounds at all, but Mike could never shake the feeling that somebody else was there with him. Sometimes, the presence felt like three separate people, lost and searching. Without realising it, he would make his movements and actions as quiet as possible, as if to make sure that no-one else in the building would be able to hear him. Each keystroke of his computer was careful and delicate, every time he leaned or moved in his chair, he was careful not to let it creak, and once he turned the computer off for the night and the office became truly silent, he would sit for a moment, almost holding his breath while listening out for any sound from the vent or from the other side of the wall. As silently as he could, he would stand and walk out of his office, gently close the door behind him, and hurry towards the front door, always half-expecting someone to be waiting for him just behind the door to the main room.

Each time, he would look over at the animatronics on the stage, checking to see if they had moved. They would only stare back at him, their gold stars gleaming on their chests, stuck in their frozen poses with their instruments in their hands ready to break out into song at any moment.

Though habit and instinct told him to keep an eye on them, deep down Mike knew that they were not the things that were wrong with the place.