Chapter Twenty-Nine – 40,000 Leagues Under the Pizzaplex
"Do you think they're doing alright down there?"
It took Roxy a moment to weigh up the possibilities before she replied. "I'd be surprised if they weren't. Freddy didn't see anything much when he went down there, so it's just gases to worry about. They've got enough air for a couple of hours, radios to contact us if anything does go wrong..." Assuming Monty hasn't broken their one trying to make it work, she added mentally.
Gregory accepted this readily enough, and went back to pacing back and forth. While the change in surroundings from Vanny's hideout was more than welcome, there was somehow even less to occupy himself with down here. Not to mention this place put his nerves on edge.
Having the weird animatronic-suit-thing ('Headward', Clara had called it) just a room away might have been part of it. He wasn't an engineer by any stretch of the imagination, but it was plain to see just how much machinery was tucked away inside its stained fabric coating, and it seemed fairly obvious to him how all of it could function in much the same way as an animatronic endoskeleton. The head, mismatched as it was, was a different story, a hollowed-out head piece that at a guess had been designed to clip onto an endo rather than containing its own. He could at least take comfort in that; he'd not seen any robots functioning without their heads yet.
"Do any of you know anything about springlock suits?" He asked after a moment, as his mind circled the subject. It was a mystery, and though one of many about this place, it seemed most relevant right now. "I get the feeling Clara knows a bunch about them, but..."
"But she probably won't share it until it's life or death." Roxy finished the sentence for him. "Eh, I'd love to say I knew anything about it, but really, I've got nothing. There's a standing staff regulation against interacting with them unless specifically and explicitly instructed to, another requiring that any found within the Pizzaplex be reported to a special subgroup of management, and a note saying that if one is found occupied, call a janitor, not an ambulance. That's it."
"That's it." Gregory repeated, not surprised but still a little let down. "I mean, the last bit's something, gives me the impression they don't expect anyone who gets into one to live long. Just makes me wonder why."
Freddy coughed quietly to get his attention. "If I might? Clara has previously mentioned that the Mangle was present in several establishments where springlock suits were in active use. I am not suggesting that they would supply accurate information, but they are not given to being tight-lipped as I understand it. There is also a high likelihood of there being documentation in the system archive, though I do not know whether the security credentials you have acquired would permit access to those files. My own permissions do not extend to archived material."
The radio was not working, despite Richard practically battering it against the wall in a vain attempt to get it to. All that came through the speaker was crackling distortion and white noise, a sign that either the signal was blocked by something between the lower and upper pizzerias or being jammed by the cable-mass animatronic.
At least, it was presumably an animatronic, or had been at some point. There was no sign of any of the normal servos, wiring or structure any of the models Clara had ever encountered, just the writhing wires. She could imagine them being crammed into a shell like that of the animatronics covering the corridor ahead of and behind them, though rather doubted it would work particularly well.
Almost as if spurred on by the thought, the mass in the dining room began to shift in a different way, the wires parting to let a battered and burned faceplate emerge. It was clearly a Freddy variant, with a segmented metal faceplate that had patches of white and pastel purple paint still clinging to it, a comically small top hat, and a fixed rictus that matched the manic tone of its voice. A pair of blue, glassy eyes peered out from behind the faceplate.
"TH-THERE'S A LOT MORE OF YOU THAN I THOUGHT!" It cackled gleefully. "OH, W-WE'RE GOING TO HAVE SUCH FUN TOGETHER!"
Monty turned a little toward Clara, keeping his eyes fixed on the face suspended before them, and muttered to her. "You seen this one before? What's it supposed to be?"
Clara was about to answer when the mass piped up again, and silently cursed the gator's inability to manage anything quieter than a stage whisper.
"WHAT? YOU'RE SAYING YOU REALLY D-DON'T REC-COGNISE ME? RECOGNISE FREDDY?!"
"Yer not." Monty stated immediately in disbelief. "Ya don't look anything like him! Side from the hat. And being a bear. Probably."
"There are at least four variants of Freddy out there." Clara cut in before he could aggravate the situation further. "You're going to have to be more specific than just 'Freddy'. Model name, maybe?"
"FUNTIME FR-REDDY, PLEASED TO MAKE YOUR ACQUAIN-NTANCE!" The animatronic replied, giving Monty a run for his money in volume.
"Hm. And I don't suppose you know anything about the bodi- your audience?"
"THEY WERE N-NICE, QUIET AND WELL-BEHAVED FROM THE MOMENT THEY FELL DOWN HERE! I DIDN'T EVEN HAVE TO GET THEM TO SETTLE DOWN!" Funtime Freddy cackled, and his voice took on a more gleefully malicious undertone. "EVEN IF THAT DID TAKE THE FUN OUT OF THINGS A LITTLE..."
This sounded very much like the kind of deadly euphemism a serial killer might use to Clara, and combined with Funtime Freddy's deranged tone gave her the distinct impression she might be a little out of her depth. The animatronics she had been dealing with back in the day – or rather, the ghosts inside them – were things of fury, lashing out wildly at what they perceived to be their murderer, or at those who stood by while they died. None had been quite this cold and malicious.
Except perhaps Mangle, who was willing to toss any number of bystanders under the bus in pursuit of a grudge against someone long-dead.
Noticing her hesitation, Monty half-turned back again. "You got a plan, or do we just cut our losses and winch out?"
"Don't know." She muttered back. "Haven't seen this kind of stuff before. We'll have a hell of a time convincing this bastard to let us go though, let alone take the bodies with us."
Funtime Freddy's hearing was more acute than she'd assumed, as he responded almost without skipping a beat. "LET YOU GO? STEAL MY AUDIENCE AWAY? NOW WHY WOULD I GO AND DO THAT WHEN WE COULD HAVE SUCH FUN TOGETHER?" He narrowed his eyes and leaned in closer. "UNLEEEEEESS..."
"Unless what."
"UNLESS YOU PROMISE TO GET ME OUT OF HERE WITH THE WINCH. I'D GLADLY LET YOU GO, EVEN BRING MY AUDIENCE WITH ME! HOW'S THAT SOUND?"
"You're not seriously gonna take him up on that." Monty put it forward more as a statement than a question, hoping Clara's silence was out of contempt rather than contemplation.
Bonnie chose that moment to join them, having made sure the appendages in the kitchen weren't able to follow them out through the door by the simple expedient of taking the upended counter that had been against one wall and dragging it across the opening.
"I'd second that sentiment. Tons-of-fun here sounds more than a few screws short of a full set and frankly I wouldn't trust him any further than I could throw him."
The amalgamation's eyes flicked over to get a better look at the new arrival, then snapped wide open with a gasp. "BAWN-BAWN?! YOU CAME BACK!"
The rabbit blinked with obvious confusion. "What."
"IT'S BEEN SO LONG! I THOUGHT I'D LOST YOU FOREVER!"
"Sir, I have never met you before in my life." He glanced aside just for a moment at something green moving. Oh dear.
Monty was starting to get agitated, and while the mounting tension in his stance was hard to make out to an untrained eye, Bonnie could see it as clear as day. He was distracted enough by this that he barely made out whatever Funtime Freddy said next, despite its volume, but he most definitely noticed how the gator's claws started twitching in response, and how a low hissing began to slip from his speakers.
Clara heard it too, and recognised it for what it was. It wasn't often you had to escort a cranky alligator out of a children's pizzeria, and hearing that same belligerent hissing coming from a machine that weighed easily five times as much and could probably exert a similar bite force set off a whole different set of mental alarm bells.
Unfortunately, so did Funtime Freddy, who didn't seem to have any such wariness.
"WHATCHA DOING, BIG GUY? YOU WANT A FIGHT? YOU REALLY WANNA TUSSLE?" The mass cackled again, clearly enjoying antagonising something much smaller than himself. "TELL YOU WHAT, YOU WANT OUT SO BAD, I'LL LET ALL OF YOU GO AND TAKE MY AUDIENCE WITH YOU EVEN... IF BAWN-BAWN STAYS DOWN HERE WI-"
He was interrupted by a guttural bellow as Monty leapt forward, claws outstretched and jaw gaping. Whipping his head – if it even was his head – back to avoid the swipe, he brought a number of tentacles forth from within the main mass, intending to grab the oncoming gator and tear him apart.
Perhaps the strange cabling that made up the blob's systems had degraded from age, or perhaps they had never been particularly robust in the first place. Whatever the case, Monty's claws gouged through them with far more ease than either had expected, tearing the wires open and sundering the delicate systems inside. Funtime Freddy's reaction was swifter even than his initial response, drawing back with a pained screech and trying to restrain the rampaging animatronic again, albeit more cautiously.
This proved more difficult than expected, as since Monty had caught on to the connection between Freddy and the cabling hanging from nearly every room what he was doing looked rather like an attempt to fight anything and everything within arm's reach. There was no semblance of even rudimentary technique or finesse, just wild, gouging swipes with tooth, claw and tail, and all of it was horribly unpredictable.
The rest of the group watched for a moment or two as the furious gator began to push the blob back toward the stage, before Clara turned around sharply and clapped her hands together.
"Right. Back to the kitchen, we've got the distraction we need."
Bonnie balked at this. "What? You're just... going to leave him to it? Trying to fight that thing?"
"Listen." Suddenly the old janitor was a lot closer and a lot more unnerving than he remembered. "You want to get in arm's reach and lose some of your casing, it's no skin off my nose. But we came down here to do a job – a corpse disposal job, and I know damn well from experience that if you don't get your foot in the door and deal with them post-haste it can and will come back to haunt you. Both metaphorically and literally." She paused, eyes swivelling to follow a table as it hurled itself bodily across the room, flattening one of the blob's appendages. "...that, and it looks like the kids are taking the opportunity to get a few licks in. Think they'll help Monty more than you can, so... y'know what, look at it this way. Getting them buried properly, out of the clutches of some deranged prototype freakshow, that'll hopefully let them rest a bit easier."
"Alright, yeah, I get your point." Bonnie held his hands up. "Greater good and all that. That said, if it all goes quiet, I don't care how much cabling I have to stomp. Even if all I can retrieve is his head, I will be hauling Monty out of there, and there is nothing you can do to stop me."
They worked feverishly, decanting as much of each corpse as they could into the thick, resilient bags and sealing them. Clara's estimate of each bag's capacity had been a little optimistic, but as her assumption on the number of bodies they would need to drag up had been a wild overestimate, there was little trouble. Even if one of the older victims had to be split between two bags.
For his part, Richard was handling it surprisingly well, no doubt having settled into the familiar rut of "the faster I get this done, the sooner I can get the hell out of here". The same couldn't be said of Bonnie, whose trips to deposit the bags in a basket attached to the winch's hook took longer than they should and who regularly poked his head through the kitchen door, listening out for any sign that things hadn't taken a turn for the worse.
The cabling had retracted substantially since the ongoing brawl began, with only the mass covering the hole in the wall remaining in any meaningful capacity. It was possible they had been withdrawn elsewhere to try and pin Monty down, though the way the empty chairs, assorted kitchen implements and even the counter Bonnie had struggled to drag across the door were scattered across the room's edge suggested the restless, infuriated spirits had been busy in here as well.
If there was one thing the relative quiet – ignoring, of course, the sounds of ongoing violence, belligerent bellowing and high-pitched pleading coming from the dining hall – afforded the rabbit the opportunity to do, however, it was to get a better look at the old janitor. He'd seen... well, frankly he'd seen very little of her since his rescue from the warehouse, and what he'd heard from the others painted a somewhat confused picture. One that seemed a little unbelievable, if he was completely honest. While his focus was admittedly mostly on keeping track of whether the gator needed help, the rest of his attention was on analysing Clara's demeanour and recording it so he could make better sense of it later.
The dispassionate approach she was taking toward this whole scenario was in marked and unnerving contrast to the obvious revulsion and squeamishness of the other janitor. Here they were amid something dragged out of a horror movie, and here she was, treating it with the same indifference as mopping a floor, acting with a practised efficiency. To him at least it seemed utterly at odds with everything else surrounding it, and it brought some questions he'd had for a while back to the forefront of his processing queue. He'd looked into the history of Freddy's a little, of course, being rather fond of just that kind of urban horror story, but had written quite a lot of it off as wild exaggeration or outright fabrication. Looking at how this grey-haired woman went about this grim business, however, this stance was being rapidly re-evaluated. Perhaps the Freddy's chain of old had been as much of a meat-grinder as the persistent rumours painted it. It was hard to imagine what else could have desensitised her to such macabre spectacles so thoroughly.
"If you're going to insist on staring at me at least switch off your eye lights. Damn near blinding me."
Oops.
As it turned out, the back of the stage area didn't exist any more. That was to say, rather than the painted backdrop on a wall Clara would have expected, there was instead a gaping hole that resolved into a roughly-hewn tunnel long enough that her flashlight's beam didn't illuminate much more than the walls. There was, however, a light shining from the other end, one that was bobbing regularly and growing brighter as it approached. With the sounds of wanton violence having ceased, it seemed more likely to be Monty, especially given the way the light was playing over the tunnel's uneven floor.
Sure enough, the gator emerged onto the stage not much the worse for wear. His paint was badly scuffed, his shades were conspicuous by their absence, and his jaw seemed to be stuck firmly shut on a piece of cabling he'd evidently bitten off, dangling out of one side of his mouth, but that was the extent of the damage. There was an audible sigh of relief from Bonnie as he came into the light of the rest of the group's flashlights, one arm shielding his eyes.
"Ya trying to blind me?" He sounded thoroughly worn out, though he managed to rally enough to make a show of dusting off his hands as he stepped down awkwardly from the stage's edge. "Eh, whatever. Don't reckon the funtime freak's gonna give us any trouble for a little while. There's some sorta office or something down that tunnel, got vents and corridors leading to it and everything. And it's got security doors too, so wherever he's gone I'm not gonna be able to follow."
He was almost knocked off his feet as Bonnie dropped the bags he was carrying on the floor, prompting a disgruntled huff from Clara, and almost tackled him into a hug. "I'm so glad you're alright. He didn't hurt you, right?"
"Nah. Big and scary, but not all that strong." Monty scoffed. "But jeez, you shoulda heard some of the stuff he was spouting. Sounded like the kind of person that pulls wings off flies. Might've damaged something though, jaw's stuck tight."
Pulling back a little, Bonnie gave the jaw and the dangling section of cable a critical appraisal. "...I'll say this, it doesn't look like anything too serious. Just... bloody hell, I think that bit of cable's cold-welded to your teeth."
"If you two are quite finished, we'll have plenty of time for that once we're back above ground." Clara butted in acidly, dumping the last of the bags into the basket and tugging on the winch cable twice. She turned her attention to the radio, which with the interference diminished was working again. "Alright, that's the last of them coming up now. It'll be Richard next, then Bonnie."
"God- -ope so. -on't want to- -stuff like this aga-" Roxy did not sound thrilled in the slightest about having to handle putrescent flesh, even with a layer of plastic between it and her. Whatever she followed up with was muttered so it didn't come through over the static, but the word 'bath' could be made out clearly.
"Any particular reason I'm going up before Monty?" Bonnie inquired. "Hate to say it, but if the blob comes back I don't think he'll be able to fight him off again. Look at him, he's barely able to stand upright!"
"Because it isn't him that Chuckles has an unhealthy fixation on, and honestly after that little display I think he's got a lot more intimidation value." She replied candidly, tossing the radio over to the rabbit, who caught it awkwardly. "Besides, the last two of us'll have to come up at once – that hook contraption isn't something you can clip to your endoskeleton yourself, unlike our harnesses, and you're the one carrying the equipment. And a tablet, a phone, and a cupcake."
"Yeah, you go up ahead." Monty chimed in weakly. "Gives my cooling more time to catch up."
Funtime Freddy thankfully did not emerge from the tunnel behind the stage, so Clara's assertion did not have to be put to the test, and they were left in relative peace for her to connect the jury-rigged animatronic harness to Monty's endoskeleton. It went more smoothly than it had on the way down, as well, since he was low enough on battery that he didn't really have the energy to shift around in discomfort at the very intrusive feeling of hooks being clipped onto his most basic framework. With that done, Clara clipped her own harness onto the cable so she and the animatronic hung back-to-back as they were hauled up.
"Y'know..." He started after half a minute spent slowly ascending, "next time, can we just, I dunno, throw a bomb or something at stuff like that and be done with it?"
This took a little consideration before the janitor responded. "If we have to come down here again, sure. We'd have to get a bit creative though, with no oxygen." There was another pause. "It'd have to be fire, too. A full-on explosion down here might cause more subsidence for all we know. That, and burning things is inherently more satisfying."
"Heh, yeah." Monty chuckled. "Too bad I'm banned from anything fire-related."
Note: There's probably only going to be a couple more chapters of this. As you've probably noticed, past retreading the plot of Security Breach, stuff became... somewhat meandering and aimless, at best. I've got some sort of side-story stuff in the works, because I do have more stuff I want to do with what I've cobbled together, and it's likely I'll continue the story at some point. Just... once I have some actual plot rather than just writing by the seat of my pants, so to speak.