Chapter two: To activate

Present day

She opened her eyes for the first time.

The first thing she saw was a person standing right in front of her. The person—a man, probably somewhere around his mid-twenties—backed away once her eyes opened, not averting his gaze from her. He let out a triumphant chuckle.

Instead of greeting her, the man turned to look over his shoulder. "Hey Braylon," he called. "The puppet's active."

She frowned. The 'puppet'? Was that her name?

"Good work, Mason," a gruff voice replied from around the corner behind the man. "The other one's active, too."

"Cool," Mason replied before looking at her again. "What are their names, by the way?"

"They don't have names yet, actually," Braylon called back. "We've got to wait until the manager thinks of some. Or that night guard guy—I'm pretty sure he spends more time alone with those things than anyone else."

Mason huffed. "Yeah. Lucky guy."

"Don't say that too loudly. Heard that the nightshift's pretty friggin' scary. Lot of guards quit after their first night. Said it had something to do with these bots."

"You don't really believe that yourself, do you?" Mason asked as he turned to the corner again. "You don't think those robots are alive?"

"If they were alive, we wouldn't be talking right now…but there's got to be something that scared those guards away."

She—the puppet, as they called her—frowned. What was that supposed to mean? What were they talking about? Her?

Speaking of which, who was she? What was she? How did she even understand what these people were saying? From her point of view, it felt like she'd just been born…

When Mason turned back to her, he visibly flinched. "Whoa…uh, Braylon?"

"Yeah?" came Braylon's voice.

"Uh…this one just…kinda changed."

"What do you mean?"

"She, uh, looks a bit angry. Or confused, rather."

Realizing that her frown had scared him, the puppet instinctively relaxed her face. This caused Mason to flinch again.

"And it's gone!" Mason said. "I just started working here. I didn't sign up for this!"

"Relax," Braylon said. "That's normal. It's amazing how real these things look. Just imagine how expensive it is to make that kind of stuff. That puppet alone must've cost the company loads of money."

"Please stop calling me that…" a third voice said.

This time, Mason flinched so hard that he stepped back and almost fell over a cardboard box. His wide eyes were looking straight into hers as he took another step away.

"Now it's talking, too!" he exclaimed.

Braylon chuckled. "No kidding, huh. Have you even seen those others perform? They play music like an actual human band."

"I did see them perform, but isn't everything they say, like, pre-recorded? This seems pretty…human to me."

"I don't know. I'm no programmer."

The puppet subconsciously blinked. She did talk for the first time…without thinking about it first. That third voice—soft and feminine—belonged to her.

"Welp," Braylon said, "it's 11:30. Time to go home."

"We just leave them on, right?" Mason hesitantly asked. "No turning them off or anything…?"

"Nope. Nothing. Manager's orders. I think their activation and deactivation times are pre-programmed or something. That, or Griffiths just lets them walk around at night."

Mason raised an eyebrow. "Then I think I can see why those other guards were scared."

"Let's go. Don't want to piss off any guards—or Griffiths, for that matter."

As the two humans departed, the puppet—not sure about what to do—timidly remained where she was. For some reason, she didn't dare leave the small room. She was too nervous to even get out of the open box she was standing in.

All she could do was wait as silence fell on her.

Voices eventually became audible throughout the building.