Michael and the Lonesome Ghosts
Michael woke up that afternoon with a start, the feeling of being hunted for sport lingering in his mind. A nightmare, already fading away upon waking, but he still felt the fear in his heart, still felt like his life was on the line. Nightmares were one thing, but Michael distinctly remembered everything had been tinged yellow and he'd felt like he was too hot; that his skin was on the verge of lighting on fire. It had happened a couple times before...usually when a little ghost girl got mad at him.
"Goddammit..." he muttered. "Fuck me." He struggled with the sheets for a second before kicking them off and rolling out of bed. He blearily made his way to the bathroom and quickly threw on his trusty turtleneck sweater and the old purple trenchcoat. When he made his way to the kitchen, he checked the clock on the stove and scowled. Twelve fifty-one. He groaned and started to fix himself lunch. So much for his sleep schedule.
After fixing lunch (more like a snack with a different name, as it was just half a tin of peanuts and some orange juice), Michael had to find a way to kill time before his shift; he figured now was a good time to catch up on his drawing, so he fished an old sketchpad out from one of the drawers of his bedroom dresser, some pencils, and sat down on the couch with his laptop.
Michael had been listening to a video on YouTube, a history and analysis of season three of The Immortal and the Restless in the background while he practiced his sketching. He'd just reached the one hour-twenty nine second mark when he was abruptly jolted out of his thoughts by the sound of his ringtone blaring from the side table. Michael jumped and fumbled with his sketchpad and pen for a moment, his phone still grating on his ears as he hastily got a grip, put the drawing utensils down, and paused the video. He then looked over at the screen at the caller and immediately felt the emotional equivalent of someone knocking an ice cream cone out of his hand on a hot summer Sunday. Evan was calling him. Again.
Michael just stared at it, wondering what the hell he could want from him now, but eventually just shook his head and muttered, "Oh, for God's sake...Hello?" as he accepted the call.
"Hi, Michael." He frowned. Evan sounded more clipped. Professional.
"Hey," he replied. "...What do you want now?" No response. Just some shifting on the other side, a couple small coughs. "Evan...?"
"I, um..." he began, before trailing off and making another small cough before going silent. After the pause, Evan stated, "Charlie called me last night."
Michael scrunched his face up in confusion. "Alright. How is this important to me?" He paused and had a thought. It was a long shot, but he figured it wouldn't kill him to ask. "Is she leaving John?" he asked suddenly. "Do I have a chance with her again?"
"Wha...no, no, it's...well..." Evan sighed and trailed off again. "She told me that John told her that...he saw you at your new job."
He fumbled with the phone again. The shock nearly made Michael drop it, but after recovering he could only relax his arm, look away, and sneer, even though Evan couldn't see him. Just my rotten fucking luck. Michael quickly recovered and put the phone back up to his ear and pressed, "...He did?"
"Yes, he said you're working at..." There was a deep breath on the other end. Evan continued, "Freddy Fazbear's Wonderworld? In Saint George?"
"Yes. Yes, I am." Michael paused himself and quickly added an accusative, "Is there a problem...?"
"...Kind of, yeah," Evan replied flatly. Michael just rolled his eyes as he prepared for the droning speech that was about to come next. "I don't know what you're so hung up on, Michael. Everything we went through...that was fifteen years ago, now. Maybe more. It was all crazy, no doubt...Mum and Dad splitting...Sam disappearing..." Michael bit his lip and resisted the urge to say, actually, mate, I happen to know exactly where Sammy is. Evan continued, "The string of homicides...Freddy's being sold off...not to mention what happened to Uncle Henry and Dad. But you keep hanging on, after me and Charlie and everyone involved decided to move on with our lives. You're so obsessed with the past you can't look forward to the future!"
Michael scoffed. "You get that from a fortune cookie?"
"No, Michael. I got it from common sense." An exasperated sigh on the other end, and Michael figured he should keep his mouth shut for a minute, if just to avoid more grandstanding from his brother. He heard Evan handling the phone, the air rushing by the receiver, and then heard him start talking again."Look, I don't know why you took the job, but just...leave it. Whatever you think you're going to get out of it, it's not worth it, mate."
Michael narrowed his eyes. Evan was right about a lot of things, even if he'd never admit it to his face, but there was one thing even Evan should have know about him by now:
He was one stubborn old bastard.
"Sorry, Evan. You can't change my mind. I'm not leaving that job. It's important to me, and to all of us...even if you don't realize it."
More silence. Evan's response told him what his expression probably looked like. "...You've gone mental."
"At this point, that's probably the nicest thing anyone could say about me," Michael admitted.
He just heard Evan groan and stutter a bit before he settled on pleading, "Please, just...think about what I said. And start actually living your life instead of chasing ghosts, okay? Goodbye, Michael."
The line went dead and Michael put his phone back on the table before unpausing his video and going back to sketching. He couldn't help but go over Evan's words in his head, and the more he did, the more self-assured he became.
After all, he was living life. He was diving back into the world where he knew he belonged, a world of mystery, unsound logic, and certain death around every corner. And chasing ghosts...?
Michael couldn't help but scoff, which actually turned into some chuckling, and escalated to a genuine laugh. He didn't need to chase ghosts.
The damn ghosts always came right to him.
He'd ditched the media analysis podcasts some time ago, at about three, and now, Michael had been looping a single song by The 1975 for the past two hours instead. He'd made some decent progress on his drawing, managed to finish up three pages of unfinished sketches and was fully in the zone, right when he heard his phone go off again.
Michael nearly jumped out of his skin and scrambled for it. A cursory glance at the caller number revealed it was from Bloomington; only two people Michael knew lived in Bloomington. He mentally debated just putting the phone back down and letting it go to voicemail, but he figured that might not be a smart idea if he knew who was trying to ring him up. He still huffed in annoyance at all the calls he'd been getting recently. "Hello...?"
"Mike." Charlie's voice. Flat. Trying not to give away any emotion.
Michael sighed wearily. "Yeah, that's me, Charlie. Don't wear it out, please."
"Funny." She paused. Then, Michael heard her rummage around for something on the other end and ask, "Do you happen to know why I'm calling you?"
"Evan told me you figured out where I'm working, no thanks to your fiancé," Michael replied, deciding not to be any more snarky than he had to. "Sorry to spoil the surprise, m'dear."
"Hmm." Michael had heard that before. Noncommittal. Cold. Neutral. Still trying not to let her intentions through. He'd always hated it...made him feel guilty. "Well, on the bright side, I don't have to beat around the bush. Are you working right now?" she asked after a second.
"No."
She continued the session of Twenty Questions. "What time's your shift?"
Michael's eyes narrowed. "Eleven to six," he replied apprehensively.
Charlie's voice rang from across the line. "Perfect! I'll meet you at Freddy's for lunch in two days, then."
Michael damn near choked on his own spit.
"Wh...what!?"
"Just what I said," Charlie replied coolly. "I'll meet you. At Freddy's. For lunch. In two days."
Michael shot up from his seat and slammed his fist on the coffee table. "Woman, I'm already spending eight hours of my life in that rat-infested shite-hole, and I'll be damned if I waste any more of it there!" he yelled, playing up his annoyance, hoping she wouldn't see through it.
Charlie remained silent after that little outburst. For a second, Michael believed she'd hung up during his rant and he hadn't even noticed before her voice cut back through the speakers, clipped and absolutely fed up with his bullshit. Just like old times. "Listen, pal, either you can drive your ass back to Freddy's at eleven-thirty AM to meet me for lunch or I'll drive myself over to your house and drag your pasty white ass over there instead. Your call." Michael remained silent, trying to think of a suitable response, but Charlie didn't give him the chance. "Bye, Mike. See you soon," she said, and she ended the call.
He lowered the phone and put it back down on the coffee table before taking a deep breath in, slowly rising to his feet, and walking in circles, pacing back and forth, his hands gripping his scalp as he tried to think up every possible response to every possible question she was going to throw at him. Needless to say, it didn't take long for him to just kind of...give up and sink back down into the couch. He didn't even have the will nor energy to carry on drawing. Michael was left thinking all of this was a horrendous mistake. At this point, his life was one big, horrendous mistake.
The freeway was a lot less crowded at ten thirty at night, mostly due to Hurricane county being located in Bumfuck Nowhere, U.S.A. Michael had followed the same path back to Freddy's Wonderworld he'd taken the day prior and pulled into a spot closer to the entrance, thanks to a lower volume of cars in the lot. They hadn't given him a uniform, so he opted to keep his old clothes on, though he did make sure he was wearing his security badge.
What surprised him was that there were still a horde of customers in the lobby, many of them still queued up to enter. Michael grumbled to himself as he pushed them aside, ignoring their shouts of surprise or more often, thinly-veiled insults. "All these people...ten fuckin' minutes before closing...!?" he hissed sharply under his breath. Once he got to the ticket booth, he wasted no time before unpinning his badge and practically shoving it into the STAFF-bot's face.
The bot took the disrespect in stride, to his surprise. Michael guessed they weren't programmed to have dignity. "Hello, Mister Schmidt!" it chimed. "We're so glad to see you again! Mister Morelli has asked that you make your way to the main security office on the second floor to meet Miss Altmann for some additional training before starting your first shift."
Michael just pinned the badge back to his shirt, nodded once, and pushed through the gates. There weren't as many people still wandering around as there were during the day, but it still surprised him all the same. He watched families pass him by as they headed for the entrance, exhausted from engaging in all the activities Wonderworld had to offer (or from wrangling their kids). The first thing Michael did, however, was locate a directory and try to look for the main security office...Keyword being "try." He studied the thing for well over a minute and couldn't find it marked, eventually gave up, and decided to wander around aimlessly until either he found it or Vanessa found him. He didn't need to wander for very long because he found a plaque on a wall pointing him toward the north side of the building that read, "Main Security Office," so Michael followed it forward until he hit a wall that also had a plaque on it that pointed him to his left. He passed a large square section of wall, but about two minutes later, he heard, over the hustle and bustle, someone whistle and yell his name. When he looked back, he saw Vanessa running up to him. He stopped and met her halfway before he said, "Christ, could they have made the damn office harder to find?"
"Ha-ha! You just passed it, dude," she laughed, gesturing to the large wall section. Michael was very, very confused, until Vanessa turned around and led him around to the backside, where he saw a sliding steel door with a plexiglass window. He had to admit he felt just a little stupid. He was about to take a step forward and ask if Vanessa wanted to show him around the inside, but she started to walk away, and called after him, "C'mon. Gotta get to Parts an' Service, couple things I gotta go over with you real quick." Michael paused but followed her anyway, and they walked from the security office across the long hallway filled with kiosks for small gifts like magnets and keychains. Directly to the left was the "Rockstar-Cade," a fairly large arcade, though Michael could barely see into it due to a heavy onyx tint on the windows. They walked straight to the other end of the hall and a double door that Vanessa pushed open and Michael followed her through; he found himself on a flight of stairs back in the dingy setting of the utility tunnels and Vanessa had already gone down a few stairs. "Follow me," she said as she gestured with her finger.
Michael did as instructed, and the two of them went down three levels into the basement of the building and began making their way back through the dimly lit, rusty, utilitarian halls. Along the way, they passed a couple sets of more double doors and Vanessa stopped for a moment and exclaimed, "Oh yeah, word of advice...next time, you can just come in through the employee entrance. It's basically just the loading docks on the first floor in the back. Much faster than slogging through the crowd leaving through the front lobby."
Michael just muttered an "Ah" of acknowledgement and they kept walking in silence for a minute. Then, he asked absentmindedly, "Why's there still so many bloody people in here?"
"They're here for the nightclub," she explained.
That explanation managed to spark something in Michael's memory when he'd been studying the directory. Something on the third floor. "Ah, the...'The Bear's Den?' If I'm remembering right?"
Vanessa nodded. "Yeah, that's the one. Not that kinda nightclub, though, if that's what you're thinking. I mean," she scoffed and threw out her hands in an exaggerated shrug as she walked backwards a few paces before turning around. "Freddy's? Throwing away their family friendly reputation like that? Not gonna happen. It's basically just a bigger arcade with a more 'mature' atmosphere and a dance floor." She paused and added, "And non-proprietary arcade games."
"They at least serve alcohol, right?" Michael inquired hopefully.
"Nope, sorry, no such luck," Vanessa replied. She looked over her shoulder at him and quipped, "But the drinks are made to look like cocktails, if that makes you feel any better!"
Michael rolled his eyes and stuffed his hands in his pockets. "Oh, brilliant. I'll go get myself smashed on soda, then." They rounded a few corners; he thought it was starting to look familiar now, but everything down here looked the same. Everything above three feet off the floor was rusty mesh grating and pipes while everything below was colored sickly teal with a dirty concrete floor, and the ceiling was also just rusted steel paneling. He figured Fazbear Enterprises had bought secondhand metal sheets to cut corners. "Am I supposed to get a uniform or can I just wear my dashing overcoat instead?"
"Heh. No, pal, you've got a uniform. It's waiting in your locker over by the loading docks, actually," Vanessa informed him. "Don't sweat it though, you'll probably look just fine anyway."
"Damn. I so desperately wanted to play the part of a mysterious night watchman who finds some poor lost soul wandering the premises in the wee hours of the morning and guide them home after an adventure of unforeseen mishaps and wild hijinks," Michael sighed dramatically.
Vanessa stopped dead in her tracks and whirled around to stare atMichael with a half-amused grin. "...When did you turn into such a drama queen?" she chuckled.
"The night shift tends to wear away on one's sanity. You know how it is," Michael answered with a shrug.
All Vanessa did in response was scoff dismissively and turn back around to keep leading him through the tunnels and in no time at all, they were back at the steel double doors that led to the Parts and Service room. Vanessa threw them open with a grand gesture and continued to lead him inside until stopping in front of the huge glass cylinder. "Okay, so..." she began, "this cylinder is for maintenance work on Roxy or Monty specifically." She glanced back at Michael and stressed, "If there's an emergency, you might be able to drag one of the other three in here, but this thing's meant for them because of different...uh...hardware specifications." She flexed her fingers for air quotes, but Michael didn't need that to know it was a dig at him. After a pause, she turned around and said, "Speaking of..." Vanessa walked to the west side of the room and Michael followed suit.
Behind all the storage shelves and workbenches was a row of cells built into the wall with large plexiglass doors; the insides were outfitted like padded cells with a simple, practical slab of steel extruded from the wall that had manacles, torso and leg restraints, and a variety of mechanical arms tipped with drills, lasers, and syringes. It looked like something belonging more in a B-list sci-fi/horror film hybrid than a children's entertainment establishment and Michael couldn't help but widen his eyes and take a step back in shock once he got a good look at it. Vanessa just stopped and motioned to the machine inside one of the cells with a nonchalant, "These four rooms are for the others, mainly because there's a special chemical in some tanks hooked up to the machining tables, uh, J-One-C-Three-Zero-Zero...somethin', somethin'. I just call it 'Juice.'"
Michael stared at the cells for another minute before he turned and asked, "So what is it?"
Vanessa only shrugged. "Some sort of company secret, but all I know is that you can inject the animatronics with one of these needles and the Juice slows down their systems, puts'em into dormancy. Like a sedative for robots!"
"Hmm." Michael frowned as he turned back to look at the rooms again and then pointed derisively and said, "Well, someone better tell the engineers they need to go back to primary school, learn how to count. You got an odd man out over here."
It was at that point Vanessa gritted her teeth ruefully and Michael realized he'd probably either just stepped on a landmine or a goldmine. "Ah...right...That...the extra one was for Bonnie," she explained. "Did Vince tell you about it?"
Michael barely hesitated to respond, "That he got retired and shipped off to a warehouse. Is it true, though?"
She shrugged again and guessed, "Gotta be. It was only here for four days, but...I dunno, something was wrong with it, always glitching out. I think its CPU was fried or something, because I had to check its systems multiple times—ugh—but I never saw anything overtly wrong with its internals." She paused before she leaned to her right and ventured, "But hey, you know me, I'm better at programming than hardware maintenance. Either way, I came in on day five and Vince told me Fazbear Enterprises came in overnight and took Bonnie away. We had it replaced with Monty immediately." She started to make for the doorway on the north side of the room again and Michael followed her diligently. "Right, I think that's all you really need to know. This place is almost completely automated thanks to the STAFF-bots, so I wouldn't worry about doing any menial stuff. C'mon, I'll walk you to the loading docks and show you your locker."
Michael just offered up a neutral hum in response. But as the doors swung open and Michael slid through them and walked a couple more steps after Vanessa, he decided to voice one of the little nagging thoughts that had been gnawing at him for a few minutes by this point. He quickly fell in step beside her, much to her mild surprise, and quickly mentioned, "Bonnie's a 'he,' by the way. Maybe put some respect on his name."
She actually stopped dead in her tracks, which even caught Michael off-guard, as he did, too. Vanessa just stared at him with wide eyes, but quickly played it off with a chuckle. "Mike, c'mon, they're all robots. They sure act lifelike, but it's all really just programming," she said as she resumed walking. He let her take the lead again and despite feeling like he should start an argument, he figured it would be wiser to keep his mouth shut. Michael stuffed his hands in his pockets and followed her once more.
"...Suit yourself."
The loading docks were massive, taking up at least one-third of the entire basement foundation. Most of it was empty floor space for trucks to unload, but Vanessa had navigated it and showed Michael the staff lockers, which was basically a small room in a security office on the south side of the building. He'd gotten his uniform, changed in one of the nearby bathrooms, and followed her back to the main security office on the second floor. According to his phone, it was now eleven-twenty seven at night, and there was no one left in the building any longer, save for him, Vanessa, and the many, many, many, STAFF-bots still cleaning up.
She approached the steel door again and flashed her badge up to a scanner on the right side that was so small, Michael hadn't even seen it at first. The door slid upward with a loud bang and the two of them entered the office, with it loudly slamming shut right after (Michael almost jumped clean out of his skin when he felt the wind on his back and the loud metallic bang a millisecond later. He noticed Vanessa try to suppress a laugh). However, he had to say he was impressed with the layout of this place: directly in front of them was a large dashboard that extended the length of the room covered in screens and buttons. On the wall above it were more screens, most of them showing various locations around Wonderworld. To the left was a table with a coffee machine and a stack of styrofoam cups, as well as a mini fridge. As far as Michael was concerned, it was already a damn sight better than the old office he worked in before. He approached the dashboard and Vanessa stepped up beside him and reached under the desk to open a drawer and pull out a tablet, which she placed in front of him. "Here," she said, "This's your security tablet. If you need to leave the office, for any reason, you can use this to keep tabs on other areas of the complex."
Michael studied it for a second, then picked it up. It wasn't really special, just a wireless tablet with a dark blue paint job and the logo of the Wonderworld engraved on the back. He quickly found the power button and turned it on to see the screen flicker to life. The whole thing was taken up by the camera feed (looking at some attraction on a different floor, if he had to guess), with three bars in the upper-left. He figured that was the main menu and started fiddling with the UI. After a few minutes of familiarizing himself with the controls, he turned to Vanessa and asked, "So...what, is that it? Don't I get a taser or something?"
She took a step back, put her hands on her hips, and bit her lips thoughtfully. After a minute of quiet deliberation, she answered, "Honestly? Between all the STAFF-bots and the animatronics themselves, anyone who breaks in is gonna have a helluva time breaking back out. I wouldn't sweat it."
Michael refrained from saying it wasn't exactly petty criminals he was worried about.
She got closer to Michael again and began pointing to the screens on the desk and the wall as she explained, "Anyway, you've got access to every camera in the building and you'll have every attraction, hallway and shop covered from multiple angles. You're free to roam the building if you get tired of watching cameras for several hours at a time, however, the company asks that you don't do anything not pertaining to your duties save for using the bathroom. Your job is to make sure the night shift goes smoothly, and...well...essentially babysit the animatronics. They'll either ring you up directly from the tablet or try and come find you, since the tablet has a GPS chip in it that the animatronics can track. If they come to you with, like, questions, or a problem, you're pretty much required to sort it out. If there's an emergency, you gotta do some impromptu maintenance work. If there's an emergency due to external factors, company policy is to keep the office door shut and wait it out. And also pray. But if anyone asks, you didn't hear it from me."
"...So absolutely bugger all has changed," Michael surmised.
Vanessa paused a moment to take in Michael's words and then threw her head back and laughed. "Ha...! Yeah, that's about right," she said after she'd worked out most of it. Another silence settled as Michael looked around the dashboard in front of him and fiddled with the controls, but eventually, Vanessa said, "Alright, you know how this works already. Don't think I need to be breathing down your neck," and she walked over to the office door, hit a switch, and walked out of the office after it raised. She quickly turned around and called, "Have a good night, Mike! See you in the morning!" and he responded by giving her a small wave before it slammed back down.
And just like that, he was alone.
Yet again.
He tried not to think about it too much and just focused on playing with buttons that didn't look like they activated a tornado warning siren or any number of emergency protocols. After some extra fiddling and mentally labeling buttons, Michael had figured out how to light up every screen on the wall with a different camera, showing off almost every area of the complex. Well...maybe most of the camera feeds were missing, but it was still a lot. He stared at it all for a minute, watching for details, maybe an errant movement, anything, but after a few minutes, he settled down into the office's swivel chair, leaned his elbows on the table, and folded his hands, calmly watching them all. "Hmm. So this is how it feels to be the Leader of the Norsefire Party," he mused after awhile. He settled back into the chair and watched the screens for a bit, but he wasn't about to do that for much longer. Michael let himself relax. Slow his breathing. Clear his mind.
The only sound in the room was the light buzzing of the equipment and the background hum of the building's utilities. It made it much easier to focus. Michael kicked his feet up on the desk and leaned back into the chair, took a deep breath, and allowed his control to slacken. He simultaneously willed his mind to reject the physical world. It was hard to explain, even to himself; it was mostly a mental thing, a command he triggered and something beyond his power—possibly his own soul—obeyed. Within seconds, his body went limp in the chair while his mind turned inward on itself, flung into an intangible realm no normal human could reach.
To the outside observer, Michael was asleep on the job. Nothing could have been further from the truth.
_ *#v^v ((+_
He opened his eyes to a bright light. The first time he'd ever seen it, he'd thought it was the gateway to heaven. It wasn't. It was actually the ungodly bright ceiling lamp hanging over his head. Michael blinked a couple times, got used to the brightness, and looked around him. He was in an office, and it wasn't the one he had been in seconds before. No screens, no hi-tech desk, no stainless steel. He was behind an ornate oak desk with a couple bookshelves to his left. Said desk was covered in business documents, antique pens, and a writing pad. The room itself had deep green stucco for walls and the floor was covered in black and white tiles. Actual marble tiles, not some cheap linoleum. Lastly, there was a window directly to his right that let him see clear into Cain McCann Sports Park, on the west side of Hurricane. Or at least it would.
Michael pulled his feet off the desk and stood up to take a quick glance outside, though saying there was an "outside" here was a bit of a stretch. The entire visible city was cloaked in heavy shadows, making the silhouettes of the buildings and the sky behind them blend together almost completely, and the grass was brown and withered. He only knew Cain McCann Sports Park was across the way because he knew where Fredbear's Family Diner was located.
Or had been, at least. Its old, rotted shell was flattened and turned into a resort parking lot years ago.
He sighed heavily and made his way to the door out of the office and pushed it open. The frosted glass had been purged of any identifiers who the office belonged to, but Michael figured it was most likely his old Uncle Henry. The only times he'd ever seen William working, he'd been in the restaurant's workshop, touching up his designs or fixing one of the robots. He turned right and walked down a long, narrow hall that remained somewhat dim due to a lack of light from the office region and the main hallway and then strode out into the fluorescent lights of the main hall. There was comparatively little here save for a couple benches for waiting guests to have a seat in the dining area, and a counter off to the left where the host would show people to a table. Directly ahead was a play area ("Paying customers only!" according to a sign on the wall to the left) with a small jungle gym and ball bit. The main dining room was on his right, so he headed there.
This was probably the biggest part of the building, more than twenty feet across and twice as long. At the far end was a stage, but unlike the one in the real world, this one was empty. The spotlights were focused on nothing.
It looked just like Fredbear's in its prime...Long before it was shut down.
It was quiet, too. Or at least mostly quiet. There were two kids running around on the right side of the room, playing tag as far as Michael could guess. One of them, a boy, had ginger hair and freckles, and the other, a girl probably six years younger than him, had shoulder-length blonde hair. He watched the two of them weave around tables and the boy managed to duck under one of them and catch the girl's leg. She yelled, then huffed in frustration, and the chase resumed. They were too engrossed to even notice him. After another minute of running, the boy darted around some tables and ran to a line of pinball machines on the left wall and touched one of them, yelling, "Safe...!"
"What!?" The little girl stopped suddenly, panting from exertion. She wasn't so tired as to not chew him out, though. "You can't use the arcade machines as safe zones yet! It hasn't been thirty seconds, Fritz, that's cheating! You're always cheating!"
Fritz leaned up against the machine and crossed his arms. "Yeah, well, you're a dweebazoid, so I don't care."
That managed to set the girl off on another yelling tangent. Michael would have found it annoying, but he'd been trying to cut her some slack; Susie was still young (and was once young and would always be young because a disembodied soul can't grow old). He walked up the left side of the dining hall, and the two of them still didn't notice him.
Not until he was right next to Fritz, and the reaction was immediate. The kid jumped away slightly and Susie whipped her head around to stare at him in awe, and Michael quickly capitalized on it by reaching down and grabbing Fritz by the ear and remained deaf to his shouts of protest and pain. "You, be nice to your sister," he scolded before jerkily releasing his grip. Fritz stumbled back a bit, rubbing it in pain. Susie was grinning at him victoriously before Michael grabbed her shoulder and said sternly, "And you, stop encouraging him."
"Wha...! But Mister Afton, he started—!"
"Susie, for the thousandth time, please do not call me that," Michael replied in a calm but firm voice. "And if he started it, it means he's trying to get a rise out of you. Don't let him." He then turned to look at Fritz and gestured to Susie with his head. "Tell her you're sorry." He didn't respond; all Fritz did was pout and dig his heels in, if the fact he looked like he'd just eaten a lemon raw was any indication. "Fritz..." Michael continued coaxing. "Come on. Be the bigger man. Take some bloody responsibility for once in your life."
Still nothing. Fritz just hunched over and looked away from the both of them, trying to hide his face behind his crossed arms. But, eventually, after a couple minutes of intense staring and a nice helping of peer pressure, he mumbled out a half-hearted, "...Sorry."
"We take those, I guess," Michael whispered to himself. He turned to look down at Susie, who had practically been rolling her eyes the entire time. "Susie, what do we say...?"
She flinched and stared up at Michael again with wide eyes and then looked away, seemingly to deliberate on something. After another minute, she sighed and said, "Apology accepted."
Michael nodded once. "Right. Please be nicer to each other, will you?" he pleaded.
Fritz scoffed derisively as he took a seat at one of the tables nearby. "How many times have you told us that?"
"Too fu—Too bloody many," Michael muttered as he shook his head.
"Gettin' tired of it yet?" he replied with a derisive grin.
Michael shrugged and said, "Maybe one day, I'll get lucky." He paused and looked around before asking, "Anyway, do either of you know where Gabe and Jeremy are?"
Susie's eyes lit up and she immediately exclaimed, "Party room one!"
"Thanks, dear," he replied. Michael turned to the right and walked out of the main hall, down another hallway leading to the reserved party rooms for V.I.P. guests. However, after he'd rounded the corner, he heard Fritz and Susie start talking again. He couldn't hear what Fritz said to rile her up, but Susie started yelling at him with noticeable embarrassment in her voice.
Michael groaned and rolled his eyes upward, silently pleading for someone to end the pain.
He continued on, figuring he could deal with the two of them later if they hadn't given it a rest (or screamed themselves hoarse). Party room one was, against all good sense and logic, at the end of the hall and was also the largest of the V.I.P. rooms. Michael turned right and walked through the doorway to find the place mostly empty, save for about three long tables laid out horizontally. The room was skewed right off-center from the entryway, so he looked over and immediately found one half of what he was looking for. A boy about thirteen years old was sitting at the party table, slowly building up a highly elaborate house of cards (the lower "floors" were as long as Michael's forearm). Michael waited until the kid had both his hands far enough away from the house to grab new cards before he knocked lightly on the wall, so as not to make him flinch and ruin his hard work. The boy turned his head over to the side, revealing his hazel eyes and black hair, and he nodded at Michael before quickly resuming his work; Michael himself smiled warmly and sat in the chair next to him.
"Hey, Jeremy. What're you doing? Building a house of cards?" he asked.
"Yup."
Michael paused for a moment to watch him work, and then pressed, "...Any productive reason? Or are you getting your kicks by knocking it down, too?"
"Eeee-yup." Both he and Jeremy chuckled a bit and he went back to working in silence for ten more seconds before he spoke up again. "I heard you've been busy."
"That's one way of putting it," Michael said.
"Hey, I'm not judging you, man." Jeremy placed a few cards on the third floor, so slowly it must have taken a minute (in the real world, because time didn't exactly flow correctly here). After a lengthy silence, he hesitantly asked, "So...what're you gonna do when you find him?"
Michael's mouth turned downward into a small frown. "I'm gonna sit him down and we'll have a civil discussion about why what he did was wrong and I'll make him write you all a letter of apology," he stated.
"In his own blood?"
"In his own blood," Michael affirmed. After a pause, he said, "Nah, of course not, mate. I'll make him regret every life choice he's ever made."
Jeremy sighed and said, "I hope so. But...and I know the others might disagree with me...but take your time. I actually don't mind waiting here all that much," as he placed a few more cards onto the house.
Michael couldn't help but smirk and needle him with, "Not scared of being confined to oblivion if I die?"
"Oh, absolutely not. I'm friggin' terrified," Jeremy said. Then, he paused and brought his hands down completely, not even to take any new cards, and turned his whole body to look at Michael and stated, "But I know you pretty well, or at least, I like to think I do. You'll find some way to survive. I trust you."
They stared at each other for a few seconds in silence before Gabriel went back to building his house of cards, though Michael just sat there staring at him in astonishment for a moment before he refocused and cleared his throat. "That's uh...well...I'm...I'm glad you think of me so highly. I do have to ask, though, have you seen Gabe around?"
Jeremy just pointed to the left without even taking his eyes off the stack of cards and Michael whipped his head around. In the corner of the room was a small figure with brown hair and pale skin (too pale for Hurricane, Michael thought) hunched over a clipboard and some paper, scribbling away at something. He looked back at Jeremy, nodded his head once and stood up to make his way over to Gabriel.
The kid noticed him coming and instinctively shrunk in on himself a little bit, so Michael stopped several feet away from him and then crouched down to his level. "Hey, mate," he said, "can you answer a question for me?"
"Um...okay," Gabe mumbled.
Michael swallowed and prepared for the disappointment that he knew was coming but still prayed he wouldn't have to experience. "Do you know where...where Bonnie is? Is there any way you can still...sense him?"
Gabe paused and his eyes flicked away from Michael, upward, deep in thought for a couple minutes. But finally, he shook his head and explained quietly, "Mmm...no. Not since you separated us and brought us here." He paused for a second and then hastily looked back down at the pad and paper and rushed out an anxious but sincere, "...Sorry."
"Don't be. It's fine, just means I gotta put in a little extra work is all," Michael quickly said to ease Gabriel's mind. After another pause he looked at the board and paper and asked, "What'cha drawing?"
Gabe's head immediately shot back up and his disposition shifted. His eyes lost their worried look and he stopped frowning. He quickly put his pencil down and held up the clipboard to show Michael a sketch of a bird that, while rough, was probably better than most eight-year-olds could draw. "It's a bird. It's not that good 'cause I had to draw from memory and there's no birds around here, though."
Michael smiled at him gently as he rose back up to his full height. "I think it looks lovely. You really are an artist," he commented.
Gabriel didn't say anything, he only quickly brought the board back to him and scrunched up into a ball again before muttering an unsure, "...Thanks."
He just gave Gabriel a warm smile and wave before he walked toward the entryway to the room with an added, "Right. I'll be back soon, I need to talk with Sammy."
Jeremy stared at Michael for a few seconds before hastily resuming his project. "...Knock yourself out, then," he said.
Michael left the two of them behind and made his way back down the hall, hung a right, and kept a close eye on Fritz who was now playing pinball. He couldn't see Susie anywhere in the room, but he wasn't worried. Michael crossed through the dining room and into the main arcade, which was stocked with more advanced games than just pinball. Some light-gun games (nothing more violent than "Rootin' Tootin' Bottle Shootin'" to his eternal dismay), arcade racers, and the tried and true token gambling games, whatever they were called. Michael turned right and entered a door marked "Employees Only" and found himself in a service hallway. Up to the right was a path that led behind the main stage, but Michael ignored it and walked straight ahead, then turned left to find a grey double door...which he opened.
This was the door to the basement, though the light was playing tricks on him, as everything below the fifth step on the stairs was completely pitch-black. It looked less like a lack of light and more like a fog had rolled in down there and was so thick it actively obscured all light and detail. But despite the downright hostile looking environment, Michael marched his way down the stairs. He passed through the blackness, his shoes echoing as they hit the stairs below him. He kept walking, down deeper and deeper, until he hit the ground. The darkness began to dissipate as Michael continued forward for a bit, across a darkened parking lot, surrounded on all sides by blackened monoliths that were meant to stand in for other buildings. In front of him was another building
Fredbear's Family Diner.
Michael, undaunted, walked forward and pushed the doors open. On the other side was the waiting area of the old restaurant, but something was off. Namely that, while the place he'd just been in was full of the sound of two yelling kids, now, it was dead silent. The only noise that let Michael know he hadn't gone deaf was the buzzing of the lights above him. He continued forward, through the main dining hall, back through the employee's only door to the back hallways, and back to the basement door he'd just been at. He opened it again and was greeted by the same roiling blackness he'd seen the first time. And Michael just walked down into it like he was walking down the steps into the shallow end of a pool. Eventually, he passed through it and returned to the parking lot outside of Fredbear's once more, but this time there were small inconsistencies in the world around him. Some of the buildings that were once there were gone. Splotches of the walls of the diner looked like they were being illuminated by a UV light. Michael ignored them and crossed the lot and opened the doors again.
The inside was much the same as before, but the splotches of UV color were in there, too, on the wall to his left, a small patch straight ahead in the dining room. Besides that, some of the tiles on the floor and other small objects around him were colored wrong, like a teal Fredbear plushie, hot pink tiles that were black before, some of the arcade machines bathed UV-blue. Michael ignored all that too, and kept walking, retracing his steps to the basement door that he opened again. The darkness was still there, and once more, he stepped down into it, through layers of tangible blackness, until he came back out into the parking lot. Except now, everything was the wrong color; everything looked like it had been put under a blacklight.
And if that wasn't bad enough, parts of the asphalt and the diner had been broken off and were floating around in midair. Michael took a cursory glance at one of the holes left behind by the floating chunk of concrete close to him.
It was pitch black inside. He instinctively felt like the opening being a bottomless pit would be the best possible outcome.
Michael didn't dwell on it and simply went back inside the diner. It was just as discolored on the inside, and in the most garish neon colors. Michael kept on his path toward the basement door, though he did have to jump over a hole to get there as a chunk had been taken out of the employee's hallway. But after walking down through the darkness one more time, Michael found himself in a place that was almost unrecognizable.
Instead of being in the old parking lot, he was in another hallway, still bathed in blacklight colors. There was a door to his left and three more at the end of the hall, and there was writing on the walls of crude arrows pointing toward the door in front of him, and circles with X's next to the three at the end of the hall. Michael hastily made his way through that first door and found himself on a stage. In front of him was a dining room, but there was a stairwell off to the right that looked like it had been picked up and slapped down with no rhyme or reason. It led to a door not even attached to a wall, hanging in midair. Michael ignored it, hopped off the stage, and kept walking forward. Another arrow, painted on the ground, led him to his right, and he followed it down another hall. As he walked, the tiles below him went from marble, to linoleum, then to stage props, then to furniture. One of them, another door, had a tragedy mask painted on it, so Michael stopped, stomped on it once, and it opened up to reveal a stairway that led deeper down.
Michael quickly walked down the stairs. The level below was a large, open room with pillars interspersed randomly across it; it looked less like a room in a family restaurant more like a cross between a storage room and a parking lot. Fluorescent lights bathed the area in UV indigo, coloring the entire area in neon colors that were so saturated, it was almost nauseating. Michael was used to it, however, and he began wandering around, looking for someone. He didn't wander long.
From the utter silence, he heard soft, slow footsteps approaching him from behind and to his left. Michael stopped halfway down an aisle between two metal shelves and turned around to see a young boy, about twelve, with well-combed brown hair and green eyes. He was wearing a child-size polo shirt and long polyester shorts, and when Michael met his gaze, the two of them smiled.
Michael quickly made his way over to the boy, knelt down, and hugged him. "Sammy!" he exclaimed jovially as he leaned away and rested his hands on the boy's shoulders. "There you are. How you been?"
Sam just shrugged and said, "I'm okay. Maybe a little lonely, though."
"Ah, I'm sorry, Sam, I've been too busy tryin' to get my life back on track." Michael stood up and began to pace a bit as he explained, "You live through the worst shite of your life and look around and the world just keeps moving, y'know?"
Sam grimaced and rubbed his neck as if he was trying to massage it. Michael pursed his lips and the two of them went dead silent for a moment before Sam whispered, "Yeah...I know."
"...Mmm, shit. Right. Bad example," Michael muttered.
"It's okay," Sam replied as he regained his earlier happy tone of voice.
It was not okay. Michael knew that and he also knew better than to keep talking about it, so he quickly changed the subject. "Came here to get your thoughts on...well..." he threw up his hands and spun around, gesturing to it all. "This. The job. This new Freddy's location." He paused a moment and after another look around, his shoulders sagged and he leaned down and asked, voice low, "...Do you think I made the right choice?"
They'd walked forward a bit, through the clutter and shelving, and Sam was about to speak before he slowed down and stopped, looking past Michael at the opposite wall. He stopped too and followed his gaze, though he already knew what was waiting for him. His eyes fell upon a rusted metal door that had a bar rammed through the handles to keep whatever was inside from ever getting out. It wasn't exactly effective, but here, in this inner space where the walls between the physical world and the spiritual were exceptionally thin, symbolism took precedence over practicality.
Sam looked over at the rusty, corroded metal. His eyes lingered on them for several seconds, though they never moved and nothing seemed to happen. Finally, he turned back to look up at Mike with a sorrowful expression. "Well, yeah...but Cass isn't happy with you. She's not happy with you at all."
Michael ruminated on it a bit before he replied, "Then someone better tell her to suck it up. Fate decided to give me one more shot at finding William and like hell I'm gonna let it slip away."
They stood there, staring at the door, for a couple minutes before Sam muttered, "I don't get it. She should be happy you're going back to look for him."
Michael let the observation hang in the air as he came up with a suitable response. After a moment, he sighed and decided on, "She wants action, Sammy. She's also very young and dumb and thinks I can just...magic William into existence in front of me so I can punch his lights out," as he looked back down at the boy.
"...Well, that's not how this works," Sam observed after a small eye-roll.
Michael just sighed and gave him the side-eye, along with a snide, "Apparently I know that, and you know that. You two aren't timesharing my soul, so she's always going to have her knickers in a twist over something."
Another pause. Michael started walking away from the door, just in case Cass was listening in from the other side. He felt bad for her, but if she decided to get vengeful again, he wouldn't hesitate to remind her she was a guest, and he was the one running the show. Sam followed a couple steps behind him and when they had moved a far enough distance, he looked up and asked, "I'm not that irritable, am I?"
That got Micheal to freeze in place and look down in shock before he quickly placated, "Oh, Christ, no, I'm just saying you and her don't have the luxury of having someone to mooch off of, so to speak." Sam paused a moment and then nodded in acknowledgement. "Right," Michael said as he straightened his sleeves and brushed his shirt off. "I should probably get back to work. Can't be entirely sure how long it's been, but I need to familiarize myself with the place. See if I can find any out-of-the-way nooks I can use to faff around without getting told off by Vince. I'll see you later, Sam."
"See ya." Sam nodded to him, and Michael took a few steps away before turning back to face Sam. Then he closed his eyes and willed himself to leave, and somewhere, in the deep recesses of his psyche, he felt something...pop. Before the world began to melt away as if sleep was being lifted from his mind, he heard Sam call, "And Michael...?"
He opened his eyes and looked back down at Sam. "Yeah, mate?"
"When you do run into Will..." He stared at Michael, his face like stone, his pupils shrunk and eyes laser-focused dead ahead. "Hurt him. A lot. And when he starts begging for death, hurt him some more."
He probably should have been frightened that Sam would be so quick to wish death on someone he once considered an uncle, but Michael was in that same boat. And now, he couldn't help the impish grin that crossed his own face.
"With pleasure."
_*$$s^BliJJ_
Michael jolted as he woke up, blinked a couple times to get used to the light, and then lowered his legs back down to the floor. He glanced around. He was still in the main security office. The lights were still on. The cameras were still running. Michael took a look around and pulled out his phone to check the time.
Twelve oh-five. Michael pursed his lips thoughtfully and took one more look up at the wall of screens before he sighed and stood up. Grabbing his tablet off the table, he walked over to the door and opened it up and out into the wider building. The first thing Michael realized was this:
It was eerily silent.
There was no more chattering from guests. The PA system was no longer playing music or announcements. Just the sound of electric lights buzzing in the background of the creaking of the building itself. Michael glanced around him, still trying to get used to the fact that he could easily maneuver around the halls without running into anyone. He started swiping through menus on the tablet again and brought up a map of Wonderworld. It wasn't the most detailed map, however, so Michael knew he'd have to explore most of the places himself and learn their layouts if he didn't want to get lost; arbitrarily, he decided to walk around the current floor and learn it first.
And he decided to look into the Superstar-Cade right off the bat. Michael quickly dashed to the right and sauntered into one of the entryway arches and was immediately greeted with an arcade lined wall to wall with game cabinets, pinball machines, and carnival games. The carpet was maroon red and the interior was darker than the rest of the building, probably to confuse customers' natural clock in order to make them stay longer (and spend more money). Despite the rest of the building being so quiet, the arcade still seemed to have a light ambient track of pinball machines and electronic dinging playing in the background. A little odd, but Michael couldn't see it getting annoying. He started weaving his way between the aisles of arcade cabinets and reading their titles if they caught his interest.
Supervoid. Qwib. Bunny Funball. Chica's Feeding Frenzy. Lost in the Dark. Princess Quest. Michael's lips curled into a derisive sneer; so far, not that impressive. All proprietary games. He was starting to think he'd have to check out The Bear's Den sooner than he planned just to see if they had the original Mortal Kombat 1 before he heard a loud beeping noise coming from his hand and felt his security tablet start to shake; he almost threw it from the surprise and his heart rate rocketed into the atmosphere. Michael quickly got ahold of himself, though, and turned the tablet's screen on to check what the fuss was, and he found a new feature on it. In the upper-left corner of the screen, overlaid over everything else, was a large yellow triangle with an exclamation point in it. "...Some sort of urgent message?" Michael guessed as he tapped it.
The one thing he didn't expect was to see a live feed of some animatronic's optical screen. Whoever it was, was in some sort of...dressing room? He couldn't help but huff and mutter, "These cunts get nicer rooms than I ever did, what the hell...?" From what he could see, the room was painted pink with green carpet, with a door directly in front of them, most likely leading outside to the main boulevard of "The Backstage Experience." Someone's voice quickly came through the small speaker on the tablet.
"Hey! Hello? Is this thing on?"
Michael paused for a second before he recognized the voice and asked quizzically, "Chica? The bloody hell are you doing?"
The viewport swiveled around to face the rest of the room. Michael could see an arcade cabinet somewhere off to the right and a makeup station on the left. Behind the arcade cabinet was a large steel door; if he had to guess, based on the directory and the map he had access to on his tablet, it led down to the maintenance room, somehow. He also saw a large couch for a couple frames as she turned around. He heard something hit the floor and saw Chica's vision shudder a bit and then tilt to the side; leaning on her guitar, maybe? "Nothin', really! Just wanted to say hi!" she giggled.
Somehow, Michael felt all the tension and anxiety he'd been feeling before wash away. This felt...natural. A reminder of what once was, only a few months ago. He couldn't help the smile that crossed his face. "Well...hello to you, too," he replied. He paused a minute, and then thought of something he hadn't before and quickly asked, "You aren't gonna stay in that room the whole night, are you? I mean, you got the whole building to yourselves."
The viewport turned around again as Chica began pacing from the upper left corner of the room back to the middle; Michael saw a rather large window with magenta curtains on the right wall. Chica then explained, "Hey, we've been working the whole day! Would you wanna keep walking around your house after work instead of just relaxing in your room...?"
"...I suppose..." he surmised after a moment.
"I'm not saying we're gonna stay in here all the time, forever!" Chica exclaimed. "We just gotta rest after partying! Recharge the batteries, y'know?"
Michael just paused a moment and chuckled. "Yeah, of course," he said. "I'll swing by soon, if you want. Just wanna learn this place's layout, have a gander around."
He heard Chica giggle again and saw her optical screen twirl around and she said, "Sure thing, Mikey! See you soon!"
Michael smiled warmly and sighed, "Bye, Chica," before he swiped right on the screen and tapped on a button labeled "Disconnect." He kept smiling as he walked through another couple aisles of arcade cabinets and carnival games before deciding there was nothing else to see and leaving through the western door.
Back out in the hall, Michael checked the tablet's map as he walked south. The other big attraction on floor two was "Monty's Bayou Golf," directly in front of him. He took a quick look up and saw the facade enclosing the attraction; it was painted with mangroves and wooden shacks on stilts, and there were more cutouts of trees scattered around it. Michael kept walking around to the eastern side to find the entrance, and to his relief, he found it quickly. It wasn't too extravagant, just a mid-size waiting area with benches and trinket kiosks with a gate just beyond with a STAFF-bot standing in front of it. Michael could see through the gates, but couldn't see much inside, so he walked forward toward the gate but was stopped by a chipper robotic voice that said, "Hello! Welcome to Monty's Bayou Golf! Please present your attraction ticket or Party Pass! Alternatively, you can opt to purchase a ticket for twenty ninety-nine or a Party Pass for fifty—"
Michael quickly shoved his badge into the robot's face, and its tone changed completely. "Badge registered. Thank you, Mister Schmidt!"
"Yeah, yeah, stick it up your arse," he muttered under his breath as he dashed into the golf course. Once though the archway, Michael found himself in a massive open space two stories tall. The whole thing simulated the deep south bayou, with large mangrove trees, a long river winding between the holes, and low lighting with an added ambient track of light rain, roaring alligators, and jungle-inspired music. Michael found himself pursing his lips in apprehension. He was not keen on that alligator before, and while he didn't mind a round or two of mini-golf, this place felt...oppressive, was the best term he could use for how he felt.
He was currently at a seating area, most likely for people who were leaving the course and wanted to rest after standing for so long. The main area in front of him was, beginning with hole one to his left. The last hole was most likely to the right, but the golf course extended up a floor, so Michael couldn't see it; the floors were only connected by a few ramps and stairs, with no courses actually extending up that far. Far above and slightly to the right was a massive statue of Monty's head and arms holding a huge bucket. The label above the giant Monty read, "Hurricane Hole-in-One!" Michael could also see some sort of extra kiosk on the floor above. After letting his eyes get used to the light conditions and get a preliminary look around, Michael turned to his left and began making his way around.
There wasn't much to note on the bottom floor, just holes one through nine. They did at least go through a few interesting obstacles, the obligatory windmill (it looked more like a moonshine distillery. How they got that past the execs at Fazbear Enterprises, he didn't know), a bayou hut, and a trailer. Though he did note that there was an area in the upper-right of the attraction that was oddly...vacant. No parts of the golf course, no set dressing, nothing. Michael made a note of it as he walked back around and climbed up a set of stairs to the second level to find holes ten through eighteen, as well as cafeteria seating up against the north side of the attraction with a small restaurant to match. He made his way toward it to read the sign: "Classic Cajun Fixins." He just scrunched his face up and kept on walking around the upper level.
Still not much to note, just the rest of the holes with added set dressing. Although he did get to see, at around hole fourteen, there were cutouts of Freddy, Monty, Roxy, and Chica playing mini-golf. Three of them looked like they were having fun; Roxy, however, had just broken her golf club over her knee and looked about ready to kill someone. Michael couldn't help but chuckle.
The rest of the upper level looped back around to the main stairway, though there were a couple others placed at about an even distance from the main one. There really wasn't much else to look at besides the food stand, so after doing one walk around the rest of the floor, Michael returned and began to inspect the counter. It wasn't anything special, just a simple cafeteria counter. Customers most likely grabbed a tray, ordered, and the slop got dumped onto it. And then overpaid at the register. There was a door nearby that was marked with an "Employees Only" sign, however, so Michael decided to start there.
Pushing open the door revealed the rest of the kitchen behind the counter. Also nothing much to write home about, just a bunch of ovens, dishwashers, cooking racks, sinks, and the like. It was clean, though, almost spotless. The STAFF-bots seemed to do a better job keeping kitchens clean than a human ever could, but Michael wasn't all that surprised. He meandered around the kitchen for only two minutes before spotting another door in the back. He didn't remember seeing a similar door leading back to the main building when he was on the outside, which meant it could only lead deeper into the maintenance areas for the gold course. Naturally, Michael hastily made his way over and opened it up slightly.
He couldn't see a damn thing on the other side.
Michael scowled and huffed in frustration as he brought out his phone and turned on the flashlight. He opened the door fully and shined the flashlight around. A maintenance access tunnel, as he expected. Checking the walls did reveal a lightswitch, however, which he hastily turned on and began making his way forward.
There wasn't much in there, though Michael noted it looked very different and much cleaner than the tunnels in the basement, which led him to believe Gator Golf's infrastructure was more or less self-contained. More stainless steel, less brutalist architecture. He wound his way around, came to a small (read: cramped) control room that he guessed controlled the waterways and the giant hole-in-one bucket, passed through it, and found an offshoot stairway that led downward. Pausing for a moment, Michael decided to check downstairs first, and he traversed the stairs. When he came to the bottom, he was greeted with another door that he opened up and found it spat him out in yet another completely dark area. Michael groaned and fished out his phone to turn the light back on, and as he shone it around, he could see he was in a large, open area. There wasn't much else to note aside from some dust, minor debris, and trash the STAFF-bots hadn't picked up for some reason or another.
There was something up ahead though, but Michael stopped himself from investigating it immediately because he wanted to check something first. He replaced his phone and took out the security tablet and looked up the map. He deliberated on it for awhile, mentally tracing his steps through the attraction and overlaying it on the map. It was a lot of guesswork due to how simplistic the tablet's map was, but after a few minutes, Michael made a discovery. A tentative discovery, but a discovery nonetheless:
He was currently behind a wall, and if his mental map was correct, his current placement was behind the wall where the dead area in the main attraction was, the place where there weren't any golf greens or props. This place had been covered up and the engineers who did it hadn't even bothered to make the rest of the attraction blend in.
Michael found himself frowning and just kept asking himself, But why...? over and over.
Eventually giving up on asking questions he didn't have the answers to yet, Michael made his way forward toward the structure at the other end of the room. As he got closer and managed to bathe more of it in his phone's flashlight, he could see it was some sort of large room. He approached it from the front, since it had a massive window facing outward and on the inside, Michael could see...
Well, a mess. A table was lying against the window, cracks spreading outward from where it had been touching the glass. Possibly thrown against it? A couch had been shattered in three, one half lying close to the door, the other half right in the middle of the room. A third, smaller chunk had been embedded in the back wall; all of it looked like it had been shredded by an army of feral cats. There was a dresser to the right, but the mirror was missing and its frame was completely bent out of shape, and the dresser itself was smashed in several places. Michael also noticed there were toys littering the floor; plushies, action figures, masks, everything, and they were all completely destroyed in some way or another, though he noticed something odd: not a single one was of Monty. Roxy, Freddy, Chica, Foxy, they were all in there and they were all broken, but Michael couldn't see a single toy that looked like the alligator. He kept scanning the room, hoping to find any sign of who must have been occupying it and why it looked like a tornado had passed through, but was suddenly and violently distracted by the sound of his tablet beeping.
He didn't freak out like he did last time, but Michael still jumped slightly. He quickly pulled it out and checked the screen to see another urgent message triangle. Michael just stared at it for a moment before he rolled his eyes and wondered who was calling him this time. Maybe Chica, since he hadn't gone to The Backstage Experience like he'd promised, but it could have easily been one of the three others. Or maybe it was Foxy? He did kind of pop into Kids' Cove and then leave, and he was pretty sure Foxy had seen him. Maybe calling for an explanation of some sort. He'd have to think up a suitable explanation, he thought, as tapped the notification.
He was not greeted with Chica's room. Or Freddy's. Or anyone's.
All he saw was himself, looking down at his tablet, in front of the abandoned room with a violet overlay.
Michael felt his heart implode for a second before he spat out, "Foockin' Chroist...!" and whipped himself around, allowing his natural accent to slip through. Harshly.
And in the darkness, he saw something looming over him, tiny dots of light that had been tinged violet from shining through someone else's eyewear. The light wasn't hitting him directly, but Michael could see it was green from the shins down, and the outline looked familiar, especially around the head, which was elongated, and the small mohawk he was sporting was pretty recognizable. Michael tilted his phone quickly to catch him in the light, and as he suspected, he was face-to-muzzle with Monty Gator.
Several things raced through Michael's head at that point, forefront among them being, How the fuck did I not hear him sneak up behind me?
To his amazement, however, Monty didn't not immediately try to rip him limb from limb. He just stood there, glaring down at Michael from behind his shades, arms at his sides. His chest and shoulders were rising and falling slightly...as if he was simulating breathing. They just stood there in dead silence and pitch darkness for what felt like hours before Michael decided to speak up. "...Do you...need something, Monty...?" he asked cautiously.
Monty only crossed his arms and his glare seemed to intensify. "Ya really think y'all should be pokin' around where nobody wants ya?" he asked pointedly.
That got Michael to get a little defensive, and also relax somewhat, considering talking his way out of this seemed to be on the table. He sagged his shoulders a little bit and shifted his weight to one side as he said, "I'm a fucking security guard, it's my bloody job to poke around. Especially where nobody wants me to. What if some little shite's got lost and stuck in the vents?" He paused and thought about the current situation harder and realized Monty might not have any real business being in here unless he had a damn good reason. A reason Michael wanted to suddenly figure out. "And just what are you hiding?" he added.
"Nothin'. I'm jus' sayin'," Monty replied with a wave of his hand, "you go too far off the beaten path, ain't nobody gonna know if you had an accident."
Michael narrowed his eyes. That was barely a veiled threat. A blind man could have seen that veiled threat. Luckily, he never left home without a few of his own. "Well, Monty, I appreciate your concern...but I'm a lot tougher than you may think I am. I imagine I could...surprise you," he explained as he slowly circled around the robot, aiming for the exit and stairway back up into the maintenance halls. After a few steps to his right, and Monty making no moves to intercept him, Michael turned and mentioned, "Especially since I spent some time as a mechanical technician when I was a young lad, taught me how to properly disassemble a machine," as he looked over his shoulder. "I'll keep that in mind, though."
His eyes remained on Monty, who seemed to stiffen at the mention of his previous experience, but he was too far and it had become too dark again to read his facial features. Either way, Michael quickly crossed the room and ducked back into the employees door, shut it quickly but quietly, and froze.
He didn't hear anything pounding on the floor outside. No mechanical whirring or clicking that indicated Monty was coming after him. For some reason, that just made Michael want to get the hell out even more.
So he did.
He ran back up the stairs, made a few left and rights through the employee tunnels, ran out and through the kitchen, then threw the restaurant door he came through in the first place wide open and blitzed through the main golf course and refused to stop until he was at the entryway to the attraction. Once he was beyond the threshold, he slowed down and bent over, sucking down air and trying to catch his breath.
After a minute of feeling like he was about to keel over dead from exertion and stress, Michael shot a glance backward into the golf course. No one was pursuing him. No sounds of anything following him. He took another look around to find the waiting area was as he left it, even the annoying STAFF-bot still standing around, waiting to take tickets. It even waved to him genially when it saw Michael looking at it.
He resisted the urge to flip it off.
After recollecting his thoughts and walking a few (read: more than twenty) feet away from Monty's Bayou Golf entirely, Michael checked his tablet again and looked around. Wonderworld was still quiet and calm. It was as if the altercation earlier hadn't even happened. It was familiar; Michael had felt it before, in the lulls between the times he felt scissors around his life's thread, when his skin was on the line. When he was fighting for his life against four animatronics that wanted him dead.
Michael sighed and started to walk his way to the escalator. He could at least check in on Freddy and Chica, they didn't seem to mind him being around. Roxy was a toss up, but if he saw Monty anytime before six in the morning, it would be too soon. And right after that, he was going to park his ass in the security office and wait out the rest of the night. That was enough excitement for one day.
Author's notes: I am back, and like any good mystery writer (or Scott Cawthon), I make sure to answer some questions while raising more. Also, Michael can actually be nice. Who'da thunk?
toolazytologin: Soon, maybe. Though I admit they're not blueprints blueprints, more like a roughly sketched-out floor plan.