So in this chapter, I'm going to be borrowing a concept from the FNaF Silver Eyes books.

Chapter 24: Out in the Open

"Father?" G couldn't believe what Will Afton was saying. "I'm an orphan!"

"You weren't always an orphan, dear boy," Will said. "Years ago, I had three children: Elizabeth, Gregory, and Michael. I also had a wife, but she left following several tragedies. First, my youngest son Gregory was killed by one of the Freddy's Cafe animatronics named Golden Freddy. Then my daughter Elizabeth died from a malfunctioning Circus Baby animatronic at my Baby's World cabaret. After that, my eldest son Michael went missing in the Circus Baby's Entertainment & Rental facility beneath my house.

"Several other animatronics disappeared from the facility as well, including an unfinished one that looked exactly like Gregory. I searched relentlessly for this animatronic and hired this deranged hacker named Vanny to find him. So to my surprise, she was able to find him in the pizzaplex above us. He was a homeless boy living inside the pizzaplex walls that had befriended the Glamrock Freddy animatronic, who offered to help him escape. Does that sound familiar?"

G looked down at his hands and shook his head. "You must be crazy, old man! How can I be an animatronic when I'm not even the same age that I was four years ago?"

"There's an explanation for that." Will snapped his finger and Vanny immediately went off to a nearby room.

One at a time, she pulled out four boxes on a dolly from the other room. Each box was a different size, and they were all labeled with the same name: Gregory Afton.

"In order to truly replace you as my son, I had constructed four animatronic bodies to represent the different stages of your natural life." Will opened the first box, revealing a younger version of G with a striped T-shirt and a bandaid on his face. "This was you as a child, which was the one that escaped the facility. But after Vanny found you, she brought you to me and placed your AI mind in the current body you're in."

As Will opened the second box, G couldn't believe what he saw. The second box was empty, yet it was the same height as him. Will then opened the third box, revealing an older version of G with a chin-beard.

"This will be you as an adult," Will explained and opened the fourth closet. "And this is what you will ultimately become!"

Unlike the other two bodies, the fourth resembled a humanoid rabbit that was partially burned.

"What is that?" G asked out loud.

"Officially, this animatronic was known as Spring Bonnie," Vanny explained. "But when the animatronic came to the Fazbear's Fright horror attraction, it became known as Springtrap due to the deadly spirit inside. Yet the fire that consumed Fazbear's Fright wasn't enough to destroy the animatronic nor the spirit. Instead of passing on, the spirit merged with the circuit boards that were collected by Fazbear to be digitally copied as hardware for their virtual game Help Wanted. This allowed the spirit to be reborn as an entity called Glitchtrap, who is my master."

"Master? How can you take orders from something that's not real?"

"Oh, he's real all right," Vanny said as she pointed to her head. "He speaks to me all the time, tells me what to do, and I obey."

"But what does this have to do with the burned bunny that Afton wants to turn me into?"

Just then, a series of creaking sounds echoed through the room.

"If that's who I think it is, then we'll finally have the missing piece to complete our plan, Mr. Afton," Vanny said to Will.

Down a rickety stairway emerged Fredi.

"Glamrock Freddy!" Vanny greeted. "So good of you to show up!"

"Are you all right, Gregory?" Fredi asked G. "Did they hurt you?"

"No," G mumbled. "According to them...I'm an animatronic."

Fredi flinched at the news, realizing that what he saw when he first met G was true.

"Did you know?" G asked Fredi. "When you scanned me after I crawled out of your stomach?"

Reluctantly, Fredi nodded.

"Why didn't you say anything?"

"Because I didn't know what to make of the information. All I knew was that you were in trouble and needed my help. So I ignored what you were on the inside and treated you like the human you saw yourself as."

"How very touching!" Will interjected. "But what you don't know about this boy is that he's powered by the souls of the children who were murdered by my animatronics!"

"I helped too," Vanny added. "That's the real reason I killed all those kids at the pizzaplex: to provide a power source for my master's new body. But after seeing you in action when I ordered the STAFF Bots to disassemble you, Freddy, I realized you were the perfect body my master was seeking. Of course, this plan was delayed after the pizzaplex was shut down while you and your friends were given new casings that make you look human.

"Though it didn't take long to find you all and threaten your friends with a fake email by Fred Bernstein the Third, claiming that if they didn't perform this 'social experiment' he would throw you to the jaws of the Repairmen dogs. From there, it set off a chain of events that led you to upgrade yourself with the harvested parts of your friends under the guidance of my master, whom I planted in your head while you were lying unconscious in the alleyway behind the apartment you shared with your departed roommates."

Fredi then saw something from the corner of his eye, but couldn't tell what it was. He looked around, seeing nothing. Then suddenly, a figure appeared right in front of him. It was a man in a bunny costume made of gold-colored felt with a mask that had glowing purple eyes.

"Hello, Fredi," said the man in the bunny costume.

"Glenn Trapp?" Fredi exclaimed. "Is that you?"

Laughing menacingly, the man said, "Glenn Trapp was an alias I used to gain your trust. My real name…is Glitchtrap!"

To be continued…