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Chapter 40

*The next day*

Fritz was surprised when Vincent gave him the night off.

"You've been working really hard," he'd said. "You deserve a break. I'll take the shift with Scott."

He'd mentioned Scott, so Fritz figured that he and Mike were back from the funeral. Fritz knew that Vincent was giving him the night off so he would be able to talk to Mike the next day, but if he kept getting days off, his sleep schedule was going to be all kinds of fucked up.

Fritz woke up at 11 a.m. and sighed. On normal work days, he slept until 12, ate lunch, stayed awake for 6 hours to eat dinner, and continued sleeping until 11:45, when he would make his way to the pizzeria for his shift. Everything was carefully planned out, and he hated it when something suddenly happened that would change his schedule. However, he was eager to talk to Mike and possibly get some more answers, so he kicked off his covers and hopped out of bed.

xXx

*6:58 p.m.*

It was almost closing time, and Mike was nervous about his meeting with Zoe and Fritz. He glanced at Zoe, who was helping a parent find their kid within the throng of people whilst being questioned endlessly by a couple of fangirls who had decided to come back to the restaurant. He admired the way she was able to simultaneously calm down the parent and answer the fans' questions while keeping her cool. She was a good friend. He hoped she didn't hate him after his explanation.

He looked at Jeremy, who was in the Prize Corner, having a conversation about some kind of manga/anime thing with Mari and a couple of fangirls who shared the same interest. Mike wished he could tell Jeremy, but he didn't think Jeremy would believe him. He wanted to tell Raina too, but she probably wouldn't believe him as well.

As for Fritz, he hoped he wouldn't hate him after their conversation either. Sure, they'd never really been close, but they were still friends and coworkers. He hoped he believed his explanation.

Mike's watch beeped. It was 7 o'clock. Closing time. As soon as everyone was out of the restaurant, Fritz would meet them at Mike's house, and Mike would give them the answers they wanted.

xXx

*15 minutes later*

Fritz arrived at Mike's a few minutes late, and he hoped that Mike hadn't started in with his explanation without him. He ran in, immediately launching into an apology as he shucked off his jacket. "I'm sorry I'm late, I was sleeping and I was still kind of tired, so I took a couple of minutes to wake up fully-"

"It's okay, Fritz," Mike interrupted, his head in the fridge. "Hey, do you want anything to drink?"

He shook his head and sat down on the couch next to Zoe, a bit uncertain. He'd never been to Mike's house before, and he hadn't expected to see that it was so clean and organized. "No, I'm good."

Mike shrugged as he pulled out two cans of beer and handed one to Zoe. "Suit yourself." He cracked open the can and took a sip, flopping down in a chair across from Zoe and Fritz. "So, before you start firing questions at me, I just want to let you know that I can't tell you everything. There are a few things that just wouldn't be safe to share with you."

Zoe and Fritz exchanged a glance. Neither of them knew quite what to say. There were a few awkward moments of silence, and then Zoe finally spoke up. "Why can't you tell us everything?"

Mike sighed. "Fuck, I was hoping you wouldn't ask that." He paused and took another sip of beer. "Okay. You know how Wi- er, Vincent 'sleepwalks', right?" he asked, making quotations in the air with his fingers as he said "sleepwalks".

Fritz nodded hesitantly. "Uh, yeah, but what does that have to do with you not telling us-"

"Just listen," Mike interrupted. "He- um, I-" Mike sighed. "God, I don't even know how to explain this. Or if I even can."

"It's okay," Zoe said. "Take your time." Her unopened can of beer sat forgotten on the table in front of her.

Mike took a deep breath. "Okay. I'm just going to start at the beginning here."

Fritz raised an eyebrow. "Beginning? What do you mean?"

"I mean with Fredbear's Family Diner." He took a drink of beer and set it back on the coffee table. "There was this guy named William Afton, who owned the pizzeria. Eventually, William wanted to open up a new restaurant, so he built some new animatronics." Mike gulped. "Um, I'm not so sure if I can tell you this part."

"Just tell us as much as you can," Zoe encouraged. She was leaning forward in her seat eagerly.

"Okay. So, William made these new animatronics and brought them to Fredbear's to showcase them. But something went wrong, and one of the animatronics killed a child."

"The Bite of '87?" Fritz asked.

Mike shook his head. "No. This was in 1983. The year you were born. And it didn't bite the kid. There was no blood, and the body was inside the animatronic after. I'm not sure. I wasn't in the room when it happened, and I was still pretty young, so I don't remember it too well."

"So William made these animatronics to kill children?" Fritz asked.

"No," Mike said immediately. "He just made them for entertainment. He didn't think they would kill anyone. Besides, he's a really good mechanic. He wouldn't be able to fuck up that badly."

"Then how did the animatronic kill that kid?" Zoe wondered.

Mike glanced around the room nervously, as though he were afraid they were being watched. "That's something I can't share."

Fritz nodded, slightly disappointed. "Okay. But I just want to know, what does this have to do with Vincent?"

"I'm getting to that," Mike assured him. "So, the kid was dead and William was blamed for it. Scott, who's my dad and William's brother, by the way, was able to convince the police that William was innocent. He quit working at Fredbear's and all of the animatronics were shut away. Eventually, one of Charlie's brothers, Michael, went missing." Mike looked around again. "Um, then a few years later, I decided to get a job at a warehouse where some old employees were keeping the animatronics." He gulped. "Ah, a bunch of stuff happened, and William and I almost died. Again, I can't tell you how we almost died, or how we survived, or what happened in that warehouse, but it's pretty gruesome and I don't think you'd want to hear it anyway. So Fredbear's was shut down because of this, and then, a few years later, it reopened and Jeremy got a job as a nighttime security guard."

"I remember that," Zoe commented. "We were still in high school, and Jeremy wanted to get a job so he could get money and go to college."

Mike nodded. "Yeah. As you know, there were more murders there, and it was closed again. Then it was reopened, and I took the job because no one else would. Scott was there too, helping me along like he did with Jeremy. The fourth night on the job, Dad was attacked. I can't tell you who did it, but William had been there in a hidden room, working on the old Toy animatronics. He was able to get to him in time, and he survived. A few days later, William fired me to keep me safe. He decided to close Freddy's for good and he started by destroying the animatronics." Mike hesitated. "I- I can't tell you that next part, but after, William ended up in one of those springlock suits."

"You mean the ones from Fredbear's?" Fritz asked. "Those ones that people can use as costumes?"

"Yep," Mike confirmed. "Scott found him and was able to get him out before he died. Then, somehow, another Fazbear place opened, called Fazbear's Fright."

"That's the place Charlie worked at," Zoe pointed out.

"Exactly. William hadn't opened it, and neither had my dad. We had no idea who made that place, so I decided to get a job there to see if I could find out what was going on. Some person I'd never met before told me how everything worked, and they told me to just explain it to Charlie over the phone, like Scott had done when Jeremy and I worked at Freddy's. So that's what I did. On Charlie's seventh night, I ended up in a springlock suit. I can't tell you how, but that's just what happened. At the end of her shift, Charlie came into my office to get her weekly paycheck. She saw me, got me out, and took me to a hospital. Then Fazbear's Fright burned down. Eventually, William and Scott decided to rebuild the original restaurant, and everyone got their jobs back. We tried rebuilding the animatronics, and eventually we got you to rebuild them." He shrugged. "And that brings us to the present."

Fritz thought for a moment. There were a lot of holes in his story. How the animatronic killed that kid, how Michael went missing, who attacked Scott, how he and William almost died, who opened up Fazbear's Fright, and how they ended up in those springlock suits. It was completely unbelievable. No one in their right mind would believe Mike's story.

"Sorry, I just don't get it," Zoe said. "You couldn't have been alive in 1983. We went to kindergarten together. You were the same age as me. I remember that. And you never got a job at a warehouse. You would have told us. This is impossible."

Mike sighed. "Zoe, that never happened. When the kid died, a bunch of shit happened, and we changed your memories so it would seem like I've always been here. We couldn't have certain people believing that I was still alive, and I needed a completely new identity. I changed my last name to Schmidt, and we created a background story for me. We needed someone to be able to back up that story, so we chose you, Jeremy, and Raina."

"But we were friends." Zoe said, her voice thick with emotion. "Going swimming in the summer, all those sleepovers, going to Freddy's together. That can't be fake."

Mike looked at her, a sad expression on his face. "It is. I'm sorry, Zoe."

Fritz squirmed in his his seat, feeling uncomfortable. He felt like he was intruding on a personal conversation.

Zoe shook her head. "I don't believe you. There's no way you can change people's memories. That's impossible."

Mike raised an eyebrow. "Okay. You don't believe me. Fritz? What about you?"

Fritz hesitated before he spoke. "Um, not really. I mean, none of this seems possible."

Mike sighed. "I guess you'd need proof."

"Yeah, but where would you get that?" Zoe snapped. Now she seemed less sad and more angry. "Would you show us the dead kid's body? Introduce us to William Afton himself? How can you prove something like this?"

Mike shrugged. "Well, I can't very well introduce you to William, as you already know him. But I can-"

"Wait, wait, wait." Fritz made a time-out sign with his hands. "We already know him? Who is he?"

"Vincent," Mike said casually, as though what he had just said made complete sense.

Zoe threw her arms up in the universal I give up gesture. "Okay. That's it. I'm out." She stood up and started towards the door.

"Just wait!" Mike stood up and grabbed her arm. "Zoe, please. Just listen. I'm not lying. I swear."

Zoe looked at him. She apparently decided that he was being sincere, because she sat back down on the couch. "Fine. Continue."

Mike sighed in relief (he was doing a lot of sighing today) and lowered himself back into his chair. "Okay. So you know how the springlock suits work, right?"

Fritz nodded. "Yeah, I think so. When someone uses it as a costume, the springlocks are held back by some kind of weird mechanism. I don't really understand it, to be honest, but when they're not being used as costumes, the springlocks are released and they snap in, forming an endoskeleton kinda thing so it can operate as a normal animatronic."

Mike nodded. "Any person that was still in there while the springlocks were released would have been pierced by metal and plastic. If the person survived, it would have left some pretty nasty scars."

Zoe sat forward. "Is that where Vincent's scars came from?"

Mike shook his head. "No. Those are from something else-"

"That you can't us about," Fritz finished.

"Exactly. Anyway, I got stuck in a springlock suit when I was about thirty-one, seven years ago. You guys would have been twenty-five at the time. That was two and a half years before I met you." He turned to Zoe. "Zoe, do you remember the last time me, you, Raina, and Jeremy went swimming together?"

Zoe stared at him, obviously taken aback by this sudden change of subject. "Um, yeah. We were twenty-three. Then we all started getting jobs. Jeremy and I went to university for a few years after, and Raina started working at some fabric store. When we came back, the owner of that place had died and left Raina to run the place. You hadn't done anything with your life yet," Zoe added with a fond smile. She was talking fast, as though trying to convince herself the memory was real. Fritz got the feeling that that was exactly what she was doing.

Mike nodded. "That was before I actually met you, and after I got stuck in the springlock. You remember how I looked then, right? I didn't have any scars or major injuries in that memory?"

Zoe shook her head uncertainly. "Uh, no. No you didn't."

Mike rubbed his neck nervously. "Well, I do now." He stood and grabbed the ends of his shirt. "I don't really like showing these off, but it's the only proof I've got at the moment." He quickly peeled off his shirt, and Zoe and Fritz gasped.

His skin was horribly scarred, with raised white lines that scored his flesh in a symmetrical pattern, each side of his body mirroring the other. Mike raised his arms out from his body and turned slowly in a circle, giving Zoe and Fritz ample time to see that the scars were everywhere, covering his back like a faint lace shirt, stretching to the waist of his pants as if they continued all the way down. On the back of his neck, where they were the largest and most visible, two scars like parallel lines were etched from the nape of his neck all the way up to his scalp, disappearing into his hair.

Zoe shook her head in disbelief. "Those can't be real," she whispered.

"They are," Mike assured her. He tugged his shirt back on. "Even ask Charlie. She saw me in that suit." He shuddered, as if even thinking about the springlock suit brought the pain back. "Trust me."

Zoe slumped in her chair, looking defeated. "So our entire friendship is based on a lie."

Mike shrugged sheepishly. "I wouldn't say our entire friendship. Just some of it."

Fritz sighed. He had the feeling that these two were about to have a really sad, personal conversation, and he wanted to stay out of it. He glanced at his watch and stood up. "Oh, would you look at the time. I need to be on the night shift in a few hours and I still need to eat supper and have a quick nap. Um, thanks for talking to us, Mike, and just to be clear, I do believe your whole story, but I just really need to go."

Mike nodded. He looked a little surprised, as though he'd forgotten Fritz was even there in the first place. "Yeah, sure. Uh, thanks for listening, I guess."

Zoe stood up and made her way to the door as well. "I should probably go too. Bye, Mike."

Mike looked at her sadly as she put on her jacket, purposely avoiding his gaze. "Bye Zoe. I'll- um, I'll see you at work."

"Uh-huh," Zoe hummed absently, putting on her boots. She was out the door within seconds.

Fritz looked back at Mike, who was still staring at the door. "Seriously Mike, thanks for telling us what was going on. Well, mostly," he added, thinking of all the blank spots in Mike's explanation.

Mike nodded. "And thank you guys for listening. William, Scott, and I have been wanting to tell someone else about this for years." He gave Fritz an unexpected smile. "Thanks."

Fritz hesitated, then smiled back. "No problem." He turned and walked out the door.

yeah i know the entire paragraph about mike's scars is from The Silver Eyes there's gonna be more from the book in here just deal with it