Izzy wasn't the only one in town who was good with books full of numbers and spreadsheets.
Except, Mike didn't have access to them. Some asshole halfway across the country did.
Mike drummed his fingers, staring at the security monitor.
Midnight.
Since the body was discovered, he had been getting garbled phone calls from untraceable, unreachable numbers from somewhere in California, each rumble having interludes of a tinkling music box.
The small police department couldn't help in any case, even after the calls were reported. Besides, the culprit of the body had been lynched and anyone dumb enought to come forward as conspirators had been locked up, then released with a slap on the hands, it seemed.
Why should they look further? Krueger did it, his records from when he worked at a daycare could even prove it.
But Mike smelled a rat. A big, dirty one that liked to serve sub par pizza to children.
And Mike was hired to protect those children.
His night shift was the only time he could snoop around in Afton and Emily's shared office.
He clicked, batting at a fly that buzzed angrily around his face.
Cam 1A, all clear.
Cam 1B, all clear.
And so on.
And so forth.
One room systematically checked after another. This repetitive part of the job was boring and while over in a matter of minutes, was also repetitive as Hell.
Mike stood. He may be snooping, but he was still on the clock. He slapped the fly, missing it by less than a second.
He pushed his long-suffering rolling chair off the desk and stood with a groan, a bad back and excess bulk making even simple, banal tasks painful, then pounded the light button by the door. Once he saw the bulbs over the bullet-proof window light up and artificially buzz, he slapped the red door button, watching it slide down with a squeak and a 'BANG!' into place. Mike pounded the buttons again, watching to make sure it was in proper order. He repeated once more on the opposite door.
Standard procedure and all. There could be an emergency, never knew what could go wrong. Once he was sure everything was to satisfaction, he waltzed on out, away from the buzzing fan on his battered desk.
Once away from the light of the office and sure he was alone, he unhooked his maglight, and turned it on. It bathed the abandoned world of play in a milky, unnatural glow, security light stars dangling overhead.
He whistled an old tune about bull riders and their girlfriends. Infinitely stretching black and white tiled floors endlessly leading him away from the small room, fading to black and silver twinkles all around him.
He touched the wall plastered with children's drawings taken from locations in places like St. Louis, Columbia, and L.A.
Getting info on these guys was impossible. Mike couldn't find decent documents inside the filing cabinet and the desks. The workshop was a no-go as well, yielding nothing but shelves of clacking heads. Sadly, they were the best, and generally only, places to look.
He took a turn, thinking about the backroom only William was allowed to enter during the day, then remembered how disappointing it had been when it was full of nothing but dead bugs and old cardboard boxes of junk.
Mike refused to let go though, he planned on returning to the hoarder's nest to find something useful.
When asking Henry, he seemed nervous and agitated, even more so than usual.
It was almost like the two employers were trying to hide someone's tracks.
He rounded the corner, swatting away a buzzing fly, no longer whistling.
Mike found himself by the stage, standing at the feet of the uncanny husks with empty, plastic eyes set into vinyl faces as flies hummed in the dark. Freddy's hulking form rose above him, and Mike, being nearly seven feet tall, was dwarfed by the elevated size of the bear, the chicken and the big, blue, bunny.
Mike was unnerved by the bunny's hollow gaze.
A fly crawled out of the socket and something skittered across the floor.
He tried not to gag. This place was disgusting!
He'd have to call in Eustace, the county health inspector, to investigate.
Feeling watched by something and smelling something vaguely sulfuric or like methane, Mike loosened his gaze, hoping to keep his distorted sense of reality from caving in on him.
Whump!
He'd walked too fast without looking in the dark and tripped on a chair leg from a nearby table. Muttering profanities, Mike tried to stand, then saw a door.
A tiny door.
One he could barely squeeze himself through. Mike forced it open and climbed inside.
It was a rat hole hatch for access to the space under the stage, probably meant for engineers like Henry for maintenance. Mike, who was almost as tall as the showstage animatronics, could barely fit his shoulders through, and ended up sliding on his back, light aimed at the so-called 'ceiling'. It was laced with interlocked cylinders and wires like a curtain of tendrils.
Noticing but not realizing the intricate set of wires and cylinders tangling across the platform above weren't connecting together at the very far right, he continued his shimmy, rolling into an army crawl.
He kept a mental note of the unusual disconnect and fell onto his back, unsure of what it could mean.
Maybe he could get Jeremy to help him.
Jeremy was short and skinny, someone who was always sent to clean out the vents.
Jeremy was probably asleep by now.
And could Jeremy REALLY be trusted?
Mike shook off the musings. Having a second person in the operation was a bad idea regardless of who they were. Best to go at it alone.
Taking note of what he saw and what made sense to him, like the small anomaly, Mike dragged himself by the elbows to escape the cramped space, suddenly feeling claustrophobic and out of breath.
Mike stood, catching his breath, too old and fat to be messing around like that.
Maybe he should call Jeremy.
He shut the door with his foot and returned to his post. Once in his office, Mike sat, monitor checking interrupted by a loud ringing.
Annoyed, he put the rarely used phone on speaker.
"Hello, hello? Uh, I wanted to record a message for you to help you get settled in on your first night."
What? Mike had worked here before it was a Freddy's! Why would he need a training call from some pre-recorded wack-job he didn't know or need?
"Um, I actually worked in that office before you. I'm finishing up my last week now, as a matter of fact."
"Like Hell ya did!" Mike grunted, already clicking on the next room. Nothing was out of place here, and this wasn't Mike's first time working night shift.
"So, I know it can be a bit overwhelming, but I'm here to tell you there's nothing to worry about."
He let the guy ramble on speaker, half listening and not caring in the slightest. A silly, lonely part of him kept him from hanging up, convinced that the silence filled with clicks and whirs of sleeping animatronics could become more productive.
Maybe this nut had some information on Fazbear's Mike couldn't get a hold of on his own.
After his obligatory liability speech, the potential new ally recorded on the phone changed tone, becoming overly cheerful and babbling ceaselessly. Mike hated it, but the sound of the man's voice, annoying as it was, was better than the usual plain silence filled with electronic murmuring.
He checked the prize room again as the phone guy yammered about singing terrible songs and not getting a bath and wait, hold it, free roam? At night? Mike knew his job, and he knew very well that animatronics couldn't 'free roam'!
That's just not how animatronics work! They had to be hooked up to air compressors and wires and...
Thump...
Thump...
Thump...
What was that noise?
And why was the man on the phone talking about a bite?
No, the bite.
"...Surprising how someone could live that long without their frontal lobe, right?"
Mike stiffened, as he watched Bonnie, floppy purple ears and all, stagger around and bump clumsily into a table in the main party room.
Mike stared, eyes on the screen, mouse ready to click for a view of the next room.
A fly landed on Mike's hand. He absently twitched, sending it on its way.
"Y-Yeah, they don't tell you these things when you sign up. But hey, the first day should be a breeze! I'll chat with you tomorrow. Uh, check those cameras, and remember to close the doors only if absolutely necessary. Gotta conserve power. Alright, good night."
The phone guy hung up, leaving Mike to sweat nervously through his clothes. Whatever this was, it definitely wasn't the work of Old Man Krueger and his dumb lump of a nephew Jason, this was something new.
Something bigger than anything he'd seen before.
Something scarier than a jungle full of innocent civilians forced to become live bombs for a country they barely owned anymore.
Something that had stolen a child's brain and left the rest to rot in some rich asshole's trunk.
….And Mike was the only person who seemed to have noticed.
Mike clicked to the supply closet behind the stage. Bonnie stopped in the doorway, then turned, not finding what he seemed to be wanting.
What he was…
...searching for.
Mike clicked again. Bonnie staggered across the party room, and into the main west hall.
Oh shit.
Bonnie leaned into a room just outside the office. As he sat in his chair, unable to stop his new jouncing body perambulated into Mike's office.
Perambulate was the only way Mike could describe the movement at this exact moment.
Mike stared, wide eyed and open mouthed as Bonnie juttered and leered through the left door. His red eyes trained on Mike, jaws slack in a wide, toothy smile.
Mike had found a study on the uncanny valley in Afton's office, and could make a good guess on why Dollface had been chosen for this weird assignment, and right now, with the embodiment of the uncanny valley standing right in front of him, moving when it shouldn't, Mike understood all too well why Emily's plans were being put into motion.
It was like the big bunny had just achieved something and wanted to show it off to Mike like a little boy showing off a trout he'd caught to his father.
Mike wasn't sure what the robot wanted to show off, and before he could figure it out, Bonnie jerked through the door on the right.
Mike blinked, then snapped his jaws shut.
This was shaping up to be a very long and confusing night.