Chapter 14: Open Season

Present day…

"This sucks," Larson grumbled, sitting in a bar with a glass of whiskey in his hand. "None of the guys I could find in the city's database matched the description of Roxana's killer, even when I tried different spellings of the name Freddy."

"Sounds like you've reached a dead end," said a female voice next to Larson.

Recognizing the female voice, Larson turned to his right and saw Vanessa sitting next to him.

"How did you find me?" Larson asked, trying to sound casual.

"I have a talent for finding people," Vanessa coyly answered, holding up her phone.

"So you tracked me using my phone," Larson guessed, downing his glass of whiskey. "Are you a hacker or something?"

"Kind of," Vanessa shrugged. "I wouldn't call myself an expert, but I could probably give Stitchwraith a run for his money."

"What makes you think Stitchwraith is a guy? Could be a girl for all we know."

"The posts sound like something a guy would write, from the way they're phrased to the rhetoric of the posts themselves. You would know if you took college classes in English."

"Didn't go to college. Now what brings you here?"

Vanessa paused. "I wanted to give you a warning."

Larson was surprised by this answer. "About what?"

"You don't want to go after Freddy."

"And why not?"

"Because he's my prey."

The sudden menace in Vanessa's voice threw Larson off. But he ignored it and said, "Why do you want Freddy? You're not a police detective."

Vanessa looked surprised. "Who told you that?"

"My boss, Chief Jacaré, said there is no one named Vanessa Whit assigned to the police department in any division. I double-checked to make sure he wasn't lying, and he's right. So who are you really?"

"I don't know," Vanessa said, looking away from Larson. "My last job left me with partial amnesia. I know my name is Vanessa, but I'm not sure what my last name is or who I was before the accident. So I chose Whit as a stand-in when I got hired for my current job."

"What is your current job?"

"All I can tell you is that I repair things, and these things can hurt — or even kill — people."

While Vanessa got up to leave, Larson quickly reached into his trench coat pocket. He slapped handcuffs onto her hand with his hand attached.

"You're going to have to do better than that to scare me," Larson said. "Now unfortunately, I can't let you leave because my boss ordered me to track you down. So I'm taking you to the station with me, unless you can convince me otherwise."

Larson then dragged Vanessa out of the bar, leaving a tip behind, and towards the sidewalk where he flagged down a hovering taxicab. But just as he was about to tell the driver where to go, Vanessa gripped his shoulder tightly.

"Don't take me to the station just yet," Vanessa said pleadingly. "I can show you where Roxana's body is."

This caught Larson off-guard. "You mean she's not cremated?"

"No, that was a lie to keep the cops from digging up her body later. It was taken somewhere else, where no one would suspect to look."

"Why should I believe you now, when you've been dodging my questions so far?"

"Just trust me on this one! If you see the body, maybe it will persuade you to stay away from Freddy and those like him."

"You make it sound like he's not human."

"Because he's not, and Roxana's body is proof of that."


One taxi ride later, Larson and Vanessa found themselves at the entrance to the city junkyard. Vanessa moved forward with ease, while Larson followed her with an uncertain look on his face. He didn't think he would end up here, but between the strangeness of Roxana's corpse and Jacaré's overreaction it seemed somehow less strange for him to be taken to a junkyard with a woman he barely knew.

They came to a particular pile, where Vanessa pushed away a few pieces of furniture and hunks of metal. Underneath them was a partially dug-out pit, and within it lay Roxana's corpse. Parts of her skin were scrapped off from the metal she was buried under, revealing shiny metal plating underneath. And in the light of the sun shining through the clouds, the wires inside her skull were more visible.

"So I wasn't hallucinating," Larson said. "But what does this have to do with Freddy?"

"Roxana is, or was, an animatronic," Vanessa said in a surprisingly casual tone. "It's a type of robot that was made by Fazbear Entertainment for their various restaurants. But in recent years, they've changed their animatronic designs to be more human than animal-like."

Larson pointed to Roxana's wolf ears and green claws. "How do you explain those?"

"It's what's left of their original designs, which have been repurposed to act as a defense mechanism when they're in danger. For instance, the reason for Roxana's wolf-like features is because her real identity was Roxanne 'Roxy' Wolf."

"Roxy?" Larson then recalled seeing a commercial on TV once showing a bear, a chicken, a wolf, and an alligator. "Wasn't she one of the animatronics featured at the Mega Pizzaplex Fazbear opened a few years ago?"

"Yes, and so was Freddy," Vanessa confirmed. "The two of them and their friends were given new casings following the events that led to the pizzaplex being shut down, which made them look more human. After that, they were given fake identities and now live among us as humans while their fellow human-like animatronics serve as waitstaff in the Freddy's Cafe restaurants."

"Wait, so all the workers at the Freddy's Cafe restaurants are like her?" Larson looked at Vanessa and back at Roxana. "Did you slip some kind of drug in my drink? Because this is crazy!"

"You were given fair warning," Vanessa said, using her free hand to reach into her jacket pocket. "But now that you know the secret, I can't let you live."

Before Larson could react, Vanessa took out her strange-looking gun and shot him in the side. He was paralyzed by the electricity coursing through his body, causing him to fall down. Then to his surprise, he saw blood where the bullet went through and passed out.

Sometime later, Larson woke up in a great deal of pain. Vanessa was no longer cuffed to him, and Roxana's body wasn't in the pit. What Larson did find was a folded white paper in his jacket that said, 'The next time we meet, I'll kill you' with a scribble of a rabbit at the bottom.

To be continued…