(Part II)

Chapter 2: Shocked

Ever since moving away from my father, I'd always surrounded myself with people. I didn't feel like part of the group anymore, not since I'd done the unthinkable. But I was good at pretending.

I went to parties and events all the time in New Harmony. I even made it to one block party here in Hurricane after moving back. That block – the one I currently lived at – was in the expanded suburb near our old abandoned house.

Over the past four years, the suburb had encroached closer and closer to the property, extending into the woods, where there had previously been a bar and not much else. I pretended like the property sprawl was normal. I waved at people as I walked down the street, and they waved back. I liked them. I really did. And they seemed to like me. But I performed those human rituals and had nothing else to do with them. I didn't have any relationships. I didn't have the right.

Tonight, I left my suburb an hour early so I could stop by the house itself. I didn't plan to, but I had to. I still had the key, so I let myself in.

Hardly anything had changed since I'd taken my stuff – along with some furniture, lamps, kitchenware, and a few of Evan's toys – and moved out. I found the same family photos displayed on the rust-colored walls in the hallway. I was surprised Dad hadn't taken those down. I found my room, Evan's room, and Elizabeth's room untouched by human hands. Spiders and dust had taken up residence, though. The kitchen had some new appliances. I didn't know my Dad's room or work areas well enough to take a guess at the age of anything there.

That's what the whole experience was: a guessing game. Strangely, I felt nothing in these rooms, only emptiness. It wasn't home without my family inside. It didn't even have a golden bear at the window or nightmare animatronics in the halls. It was a dried-out husk of a building.

I left it thoughtfully and hiked through the woods to the large purple shed. If I didn't know better, I would've taken it for a gardening shed, albeit one with an advanced keypad for a lock. I had the pass code for it now. It came in my employee welcome packet with a handheld computer – something that looked like a golden etch-a-sketch with giant eyes above the screen. This was called a Hand Unit, and the screen wobbled around every time I tried to turn it on, but that wasn't my main problem at the moment.

My sweaty fingers slipped on the lock, but I punched in the code and jerked back as the door swung open automatically. This revealed another door – this one shiny, metallic, and curved. It had an elevator button next to it.

I nervously unwrapped a stick of gum and popped it in my mouth before slapping the down arrow. It was the only arrow.

The button dinged, and the door slid open immediately. I tip-toed inside.

The door shut, and the elevator and I plummeted down. I didn't think it was necessary or practical to create a storage facility quite this deep underground, but "necessary" and "practical" had never described my father's work.

While I descended, a giant overhead fan fluttered some character posters that were loosely taped to the walls: Circus Baby and a dancing human-looking animatronic that I'd never seen before. She looked… well, she looked like my mother. It had her face and smile, but it was posed with its arms extended in a joy that I hadn't seen in my mother for years. She wore a ballet dress and a delicate decorative comb in her bun, which was similar to one Mum had worn to a recital in her teen years. She used to keep a picture from that recital on her dresser.

This poster transfixed me, and I had to remind myself to breath. I barely listened to the job overview piping out of a malfunctioning Hand Unit computer. I hadn't been able to input my name right, and the computer insisted on calling me Eggs Benedict, but I couldn't even muster any irritation, not at that.

All my ire was reserved for my father. How much time and attention had he poured into this mockery of my mother? He should've given all of it to the real flesh-and-blood human instead.

The elevator slowed to a stop and dimmed. It opened to reveal a small vent with yellow DANGER tape criss-crossing above it. I took a steadying breath, crawled into the bunker's Control Module, then stood up and dusted off my knees in the most determined way someone can do something so mundane.

I had to focus now. I hadn't been around most of these animatronics before, and I didn't know what sort of maintenance they'd need. I was here for Circus Baby, but I needed to do my job so that my bosses would let me stay here.

The Control Module was barely lit, and this light was a sickly green. Another fan was on the wall straight ahead of me, and a darkened animatronic showroom on each side of the room, each with a control panel outside the glass. Two identical vents led to the showrooms, and a third burrowed beneath the fan. According to my map, that led to the Circus Gallery.

The walls around me were arrayed with a collection of staticky monitors and animatronic face plates. The most prominent of these – a white face with a red nose and striped party hat – perched above the fan, directly under the two yellow-green lights. Those lights weren't doing it any favors. There was also a trio of childlike faces and a spare Circus Baby face. A few more posters decorated the room, along with a jack-in-the-box clown that had broken free from its box. I wrinkled my nose and tuned in to my Hand Unit.

"…get started with your daily tasks," it was saying. "View the window to your left. This is the Ballora Gallery: Party Room and Dance Studio, encouraging kids to get fit and enjoy pizza! Let's turn on the light and see if Ballora is onstage. Press the blue button on the elevated keypad to your left."

Was Ballora the dancer that Dad based on Mum? It had to be. Hesitantly, I did as instructed, and a buzzing light partially illuminated… an empty stage.

I slumped, crestfallen, and said, "Oh." I had to admit that while part of me saw Ballora as something wrong and twisted, part of me just wanted to see my mum again. Wasn't that why my dad had built her, too? Did that mean I was thinking like him? No, it had to be normal.

What was slightly less normal was when the Hand Unit said, "Uh oh! It looks like Ballora doesn't feel like dancing. Let's give her some motivation. Press the red button now to administer a controlled shock. Maybe that will put the spring back in her step."

"What now?" I asked, blinking rapidly as I tried to clear my head.

Indeed, the control panel featured two prominent buttons: a blue one with a little light symbol and a red one with a lightning bolt. Red and lightning both screamed "danger" to me, but here they were, built into the control room. The engineers took time to design and install a system to "convince" animatronics to obey them by electrocuting those that didn't comply.

Were these animatronics… sentient? Could they feel? Or was it some kind of advanced artificial intelligence programmed so that they thought they could feel pain and respond accordingly?

Either way, my heart fluttered as I considered what that meant. The animatronics felt pain, or thought they could. They could form their own decisions about what they wanted to do. Maybe it was based within a set of programming parameters, but still…

Was Dad trying to make living animatronics? Had he put his Remnant in them? Were these the "volunteers" he'd talked about?

There was only one way to find out.

I'd learned from bitter experience not to torment anyone within my power, but I'd have to make an exception for these animatronics. It was a terrible, terrible idea to taunt them – not just from an ethical standpoint. It also didn't seem safe to antagonize big, strong robots.

But the only way I would learn what happened to Elizabeth was to play along.

I pressed the red button.

A shock sizzled through my mother's… through Ballora's Gallery. I gagged at the smell of burned wires and plastic.

Tears stung my eyes as I pressed the light button again. This time, Ballora pirouetted on her stage, surrounded by smaller dancers that looked like looked like an artist's figure models in tutus. Ballora and her little children all held wide, empty grins. Had they all been shocked to make them dance and smile?

Oblivious to my distress, the Hand Unit went on, "Excellent. Ballora is feeling like her old self again and will be ready to perform again tomorrow. Now, view the window to your right. This is the Funtime Auditorium where Funtime Foxy encourages kids to play and share. Try the light! Let's see what Funtime Foxy is up to."

"Why is a pirate sharing?" I asked my computer tersely, neither expecting nor receiving an answer.

I wasn't shocked when I had to shock Foxy, too, but I was still sick at the thought of it.

"Focus, Mike," I reminded myself. I checked the light, and there he was, in all his plastic glory. Unlike Henry and Dad's early animatronics, everything here had the softness stripped away.

Instead of sporting his old rusty fur, Foxy was pink and white and stiff. The character model was similar to the old Foxy. Rather, it was similar to the original design, since it was no longer a pirate at all. My dad had told me that all the animatronics down here had hard plastic bodies, and it was holding true so far.

"Hmph," I said. I'd expected the face, since that face was on the old animatronic that I'd ripped apart and reassembled as a kid. It never had a full body, though. I could always freely access the endoskeleton and other parts.

"Looks like Funtime Foxy is in perfect working order. Great job! In front of you is another vent shaft. Crawl through it to reach the Circus Gallery Control Module."

"So, you're not going to let me stop and process what I just did? Of course you're not."

Actually, I had no real schedule to follow. Just tasks to perform. I could've lingered longer, but instead I plunged deeper into Dad's house of horrors.

"Let's get this over with," I muttered.

The Circus Gallery. This was where I needed to go. It was where I would find her.

I clomped through the thin metal vent on my hands and knees then clamored up into another control room. This one was smaller and had different paraphernalia, and instead of a glassed-in showroom on either side, this one only held one window.

This glass was dark like the other, but it made my heart quicken. Circus Baby was on the other side of this glass. She'd waited for years beneath my feet, but now I was only a button's-press away from seeing her. Or two buttons.

Apprehensively, I tried the light. Nothing.

"No, no, no," I whispered. "Please, no."

But my words were drowned out by an unthinking machine, that was saying, "Let's encourage Baby to cheer up with a controlled shock."

"No!" I yelled it this time and threw the Hand Unit to the floor. That wasn't going to help its glitching, but I didn't care. I sank to the ground, dropping my head into my hands. "I can't do it," I told… myself? My dad? Elizabeth?

But, of course, I could. I could push a button. I had to press the button. I did push the button.

The stage stayed empty, so the voice called for a second shock. Then a third.

The stage was still empty, but this time, the Hand Unit said, "Great job, Circus Baby. We knew we could count on you! That concludes your duties for your first night on the job. We don't want you to leave overwhelmed; otherwise, you might not come back. Please leave using the vent behind you, and we'll see you again tomorrow."

He didn't think I was overwhelmed, huh? I let out a nervous giggle at the thought.

After all of this, was Circus Baby even in this building? Or was the computer confused?

Either way, I kept giggling as I backed out of the vent.

My fit continued as I rode the elevator up to the surface and approached the plain black car that had appeared in the driveway while I'd been underground. Clay rolled down the driver's window and stuck his head out far enough for me to identify him in the moonlight. "Didn't even get a chance to nap. We decided to wait for you. On your first night, at least. You weren't gone long. Is everything okay?"

Inside the car, there was one other man besides him – too far in the shadows to see at this time of night – and the strong MSG smell of Chinese takeout.

"Everything's okay," I said. "Everything's okay. Basically just orientation. Pushed a few buttons. Everything's okay. Everything… everything's okay."

Clay's voice deepened. "Get in the car."

I obeyed, and when I was in the car, I repeated, "Everything's okay."

"Okay," he agreed, then immediately contradicted himself by saying, "I'm going to drop Officer Fitzgerald back at the station, and then I'm taking you to my house. You'll spend the rest of the night there, and then, if I decide you're actually okay, I'll bring you back to your place tomorrow."

"Sure." I glanced over my shoulder as the car crackled over the gravel drive. "Tomorrow's another day."

"Mm, hm."

He whisked me back to his place in no time at all, and we tiptoed up the steps to a three-story house that looked as old as Hurricane itself, but in better condition. We had to turn a few lights on passing through, which summoned a stern woman in pajamas and a bathrobe. When she saw me, she stiffened. "Is that… are you…?"

"Betty, this is Mike."

"Wait here," Betty Burke said to me, and then, to her husband, "and you come with me." They exited swiftly, but they weren't quite out of earshot when Betty asked, "You brought William Afton's son into our house?" The stinging accusation faded into a back-and-forth series of frantic whispers.

As they argued about me in the next room, I realized how dry my mouth was. I headed for the kitchen sink, and the old floorboards creaked beneath my feet. Betty Burke flew back into the room, lavender bathrobe flapping behind her like a superhero's cape and Clay trailing behind. "I told you to stay put!"

My eyes widened, and I pointed mutely at the sink. At least, I pointed as best as I could while still clutching my Hand Unit like a security blanket. I released it with some difficulty from my white-knuckled grip.

Betty pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed. "Fine. You can stay the night. But Carlton's staying in our room," she added to Clay. "And I want him gone tomorrow." She jabbed a finger at me.

"Yes, ma'am," we both said, and she nodded. "Welcome back to Hurricane, Michael."