Chapter 10: What Lurks in the Dark

Marlene blinks, her eyes slow to adjust to the sudden darkness. For a moment, she hears Sun let out a surprised grunt and Marlene squints into the darkness.

Glowing red eyes blink back.

She fumbles for the flashlight on her phone and turns it towards the eyes.

Something is wrong with this animatronic. Maybe it has something to do with how its unmoving red eyes stare blankly ahead. It stands hunched forward, bouncing slowly back and forth. Like Sun, they have a permanent smile but Marlene doesn't find it soothing. Moon appears darker in his navy outfit, as though meant to be able to sneak around after hours.

The hair on the back of her neck raises and her skin crawls, as though there were thousands of invisible ants all over her body.

And then it speaks and the blood drains from Marlene's face.

"Naughty children," it says, continuing to rock side to side. Its metallic voice comes out gravelly and slow, like someone who considered smoking their religion. It twists its head sluggishly once, then twice. It was deciding what to do with them.

Marlene spots a few familiar orange points sticking out of Moon's cap like ginger curls.

Her friend is there, somewhere.

"Turn on the lights," Marlene whispers, eyes honed on Moon's ever-moving form.

"Not yet," Jesse whispers back, "We need to see what he'll do."

Moon gives a few excited hops, letting out a harsh screeching sound. As the screech plays out a couple more times, she realizes Moon was laughing. Her stomach knots into a noose.

Bringing a finger to where his mouth would be, Moon's swaying slows to a stop.

Jesse locks arms with Marlene as the three stare at each other, frozen in place.

"It's past your bedtime."

Moon lunges out of the light, vanishing into the dark.

"Shit! Where'd he go?!" Jesse squeezes her arm tighter as Marlene desperately turns her light around the room. She tries to listen for the robot but all Marlene hears is her heart pounding and Jesse's harsh breathing.

At a flash of movement, Marlene jerks left, yanking away from Jesse's hold. Pain spiked through her shoulder for a split second as Marlene hits the floor with a heavy thud. Jerking her head around, Marlene glances behind her.

Her heart jumps into her throat.

Moon grips Jesse by the shoulders, holding them in the air like a child holds a ragdoll. Jesse thrashes against the robot's hands, trying to pry themselves from the Moon's powerful grip.

Marlene looks around the room, frantically looking around the room when she brushes against something. When she grabs it, she notices that it was a familiar black box.

The taser.

Rushing the robot, Marlene pulls the trigger.

A bright light, like a camera flashing, goes off with a loud clicking sound. The smell of singed plastic hangs in the hair, like the ghost of something rotten. Jesse falls from the robot's grip like a sack of rocks, yelling as they hit the floor.

Marlene flips on the lights, turning back to see Moon lying face down, corpse-like on the floor. She doesn't feel bad at first, only relieved that it's over. But then Moon begins to transform. The hat hides away in a compartment Marlene didn't know existed, bent orange points flipping back out. The colors on the clothes bleed from blue to orange in a way that reminds Marlene of the mood ring she had as a kid.

Soon enough, only Sun remains.

The sight does little for her twisted stomach.

'We should never have tried this.' Marlene bends down to Sun, flipping him onto his back. On his side were two, off-colored spots where the taser hit him.

"He should reboot soon," Jesse says, laying a hand on Marlene's shoulder.

"What's next?" Marlene croaks. Her hands tremble as she raises them to brush a few stray hairs out of her face.

"We wait."

The wait kills her quietly, her mind playing darker and darker scenarios for her to contemplate. What would Moon have done if he caught her?

What would he have done to Jesse had Marlene not found the taser?

Each answer she supplies for herself makes her feel cornered, like a rabbit during hunting season - jittery and paranoid.

"I'll be back," Marlene promises before ducking out of the room and locking herself in the bathroom. Running the iciest water imaginable, Marlene holds her hands under the water. As she focuses on the cold sensation, Marlene takes one calming breath. Then another.

'In one, two, three, four,' Marlene counts, inhaling through her nose before similarly exhaling through her mouth. She makes an effort to breathe from her stomach instead of her chest, a skill she learned a few years ago. The powerless feeling gripping her fades but never vanishes. Instead, it drifts off into her mind's background noise.

By the time Marlene finds the emotion easier to manage, her hands are red and numb.

"Alright," Marlene whispers, pointing to herself in the mirror as though speaking to someone else, "you're going to go out there and act normal. You're fine and this didn't affect you."

Marlene takes another breath, molding herself into character.

"You are going to be calm, collected, and put together," Marlene orders herself, "Smile."

She practices in the mirror, not leaving the bathroom until she deems her smile to be real enough.

Then she rejoins Jesse and Sun, who had moved to the kitchen. Sun sits at the table while Jesse hovers over him, holding a cord Marlene had never seen before.

"Listen, I'm not going to do anything, I'm just gonna take a look at your coding. I need to see if we can do anything about the Moon situation. Think of this as a diagnostic appointment."

"Well…" Sun starts, glancing up to Marlene as she sits next to him, "as long as you're just looking…"

Without reservation, Jesse sets up their laptop and connects the cord to Sun's head and their computer. They start explaining what they were going to do, though Marlene has a hard time following the conversation. It doesn't help that Jesse keeps cutting themselves off, trailing off every so often. When that happened, Jesse would start up on a seemingly unrelated subject. Messy as it is, Sun nods along.

Marlene wonders if he truly understood or if he was just nodding to be polite.

Once Jesse can access the code, they read through the lines. Not wanting to pull on the cord, Sun tries to stay still. From under the table, Marlene hears one of his legs bouncing off the tile floor. Though the near-constant tapping grates against her ears, Marlene doesn't comment.

'This must be like a doctor's appointment to him,' Marlene considers, tapping her fingernail against the table in tune to Sun's tapping. Marlene begins enjoying herself until Jesse sighs loudly.

"Will you both knock that off?" They grumble though they give Marlene in particular a pointed look. Marlene frowns and there's a part of her that wants to continue out of spite.

"Sorry!" Sun apologizes and the bouncing stops. Instead, he begins to fidget and move in other ways. He looks around the room, flinching when the cord goes taut.

"Hey Sun," Marlene says, poking Sun's arm gently, "Do you want to play a game?"

"Oh, I love games! What kind of game should we play?" Sun asks, carefully tilting his face towards her.

"I have a few puzzles we can do. How does that sound?"

"A puzzle sounds like fun!"

Marlene scoots the chair out and makes her way to the storage closet. She cringes as she stares into the sea of chaos.

"Forgot about that mess." Marlene rubs her head, frustrated though not surprised, "Well, that's a job for future me."

Pushing the chore off, Marlene glances through her puzzles stored on the back shelf. Truthfully, Marlene can't recall when she received most of her puzzles. She started collecting them when she was a preteen and the circumstances of each puzzle had long since faded to obscurity.

One puzzle still has a special place in her heart though.

Marlene carefully tugs a green box from the middle of a stack. On the cover is a picture of a beautifully landscaped yard. There were all sorts of flowering plants throughout the yard, her favorite being the red and white striped tulips. In the right corner is a weeping willow and underneath it sits a white garden bench. After slipping the box out, Marlene waits for the pile to still before closing the door.

She received the puzzle for her golden birthday at the age of thirteen. Marlene's collection of puzzles was a lot smaller back then, and her family knew she had been looking for a new one. At the time, Marlene – who still craved her mother's attention – received the garden puzzle. Looking back, Marlene remembers the hopeful and excited emotions that gift brought out in her. It was like a warm buzz of energy.

'Of course, a lot has changed since then,' Marlene thinks as she makes her way back to the kitchen. There was her mother's affair, and then her parent's divorce. She became the eldest of three instead of two and Marlene had gotten quite a bit older.

And there was more change to come. When Sun didn't throw curveballs into her otherwise normal life, other things were waiting around the corner.

And yet, some things stayed the same. Like how the garden puzzle remained her favorite.

Marlene sets the box down on the kitchen table and begins spilling its contents for Sun to see. Picking at the pieces, they chatter quietly as Jesse works. As Sun focuses on finding what pieces went where, his fidgeting slows and Marlene smiles.

The two had gotten halfway through the puzzle before Jesse finished reading through Sun's code.

"Alright! There's good news, bad news, and possibly worse news," Jesse announces, pulling Marlene's attention from the puzzle, "So, Sun's programming is needlessly complicated and that is partially because of how he shares his programming with Moon. Think of it as a two minds, one host situation…"

Marlene nods, glancing up at Sun and wondering how well he'd take the information.

"...Bad news is that a lot of Sun's programming is shared with Moon's. Not everything, but it might as well be. Just about anything requiring body movement shares the same coding. Because of how intertwined their programming is, we've got two options," Jesse puts up two fingers. "I could redo his coding from scratch. His memories would… probably fine but it would take forever which I, for one, would hate."

'Is it really an option then?' Marlene wonders, glancing between Sun and Jesse.

"...And the other?" Sun asks hesitantly, his hand shakily setting a puzzle piece down on the table.

"The other is I try to split Sun and Moon's code apart. It's just the coding specific to Moon that's all sorts of jacked up, but Sun's seems fine. It's still gonna take a while but it's loads better than starting from scratch!"

After a moment of silence, Jesse slowly raises their hand. "For the record, I vote for the second option."

Marlene doesn't answer, waiting for Sun's answer. If she were honest, Marlene likes those odds. She trusts Jesse, but this was Sun's decision at the end of the day.

"Can you really fix me?"

"Are you afraid?" Jesse asks instead and Marlene eyes them with alarm. 'Where are they going with this?'

"Yes."

"Well, let's start there then. What are you afraid of?"

Sun shifts in his seat. "It's hard to put into words…"

Jesse waits quietly for Sun to speak up again.

"Just… What if it goes wrong? What if you can't do it? What if I'm… worse afterward?"

Jesse leans forward on their elbows, a sympathetic look on their face. "Those worries are normal to have but I can't tell you what to do. I can say this: I am very good at what I do. I have worked with animatronic coding before and I promise you that we will plan how to do this together."

Sun glances down at Marlene for a few seconds before nodding slowly. "...Okay. Let's give option two a try."

"Alright," Jesse says, putting away their equipment, "I'll come over on my next day off. We can make a game plan then."

Not long after, Marlene and Sun wish Jesse a good night and stand for a few seconds by the door. Marlene wonders if she should say something or not. 'Maybe silence is a good thing,' Marlene thinks, exhaustion weighing heavy on her body.

"Marlene?"

'Or not.'

"Yeah, Sun?" Marlene answers, giving her roommate a tight smile.

"What do you want to do? About the lights?" Sun asks nervously, slouching a little. It's easier on her neck, so Marlene doesn't mind. She does wonder if the slouching was bad for Sun's back though.

"Well, I understand why you need the lights on… how many lights are you leaving on at night?

"Oh, I've been leaving the lights in the kitchen, the living room, and the hallway on."

"So basically all the lights except my room and the bathroom?" Marlene asks, trying to guess how much that would add up to next month. 'Too much,' she decides, though she doesn't have a number.

"Oh no! I've left that one room across from your room alone."

'That's a yes…' Marlene thinks grumpily, rubbing her forehead. Though, Sun did surprise her. She assumed Sun would have an interest in that room. It was going to be the nursery. "Sun… will you be okay with one well-lit room?"

"I… I suppose so. It gets a bit boring though…"

Marlene then gets either the best or the worst idea she's ever had.

"What if you hang in my room during the night? I've got the bookshelf and my computer in there. Surely you'll have an easier time entertaining yourself there than anywhere else, right?"

"Won't it be too bright for you to sleep?"

"I've got a face mask lying around somewhere. It'll take some getting used to and we can stop if we hate it. What do you think?" Marlene reasons, smiling proudly.

"You…You're a genius! I can't believe we didn't think of this before!" Sun exclaims, pulling Marlene into an excited hug. Marlene laughs, as Sun gives her a twirl, "it'll be just like a sleepover! How fun!"

As the two make preparations for their first sleepover, Marlene settles onto a new conclusion. The future is scary and unknown, but things will turn out okay in the end. Maybe there will be bad times or a bump in the road, but so long as people like Sun or Jesse exist, everything will be okay.

A/N: Hey everyone! Thanks again for picking this story up. It's honestly been really cool to see people reading and that leads me to today's conversation. I really like this story and I want to keep posting. However, updating once a week has proven to be very difficult for me to maintain and I've been feeling a little burnt out.

That being said, I will now be posting chapters bi-weekly and my next upload will be 4/1/22.

See you next chapter!