Chapter 4: Scooped

My heavy breaths echoed in the metal springlock suit, and I tried to slow them. Even hard breathing felt like too much movement as the metal mummified my entire body. These suits were meant to walk around, but this one had been completely immobilized.

That meant that if I moved to much, I would shake the springlocks free. That would release the pins, which would impale me instantly but leave me to bleed out slowly. If I cried, the water would make the locks fail, to the same effect.

A groan escaped from somewhere deep inside me, and it rattled the suit ever so slightly.

"Shh," Circus Baby whispered. "Be still and quiet."

So, the situation was worse than I thought. Not only was I trapped in this death suit, but I was trapped with her – with the animatronic that killed my sister. I couldn't see her through the eye holes, so I didn't know if she was physically present or still talking over hidden speakers.

"No," I muttered petulantly (but not too loudly).

"You've been sleeping for quite a while. I think they noticed that you never left the building last night."

Last night. Had I been unconscious for a whole day? Had I been drifting in and out?

"The cameras were searching for you, but they couldn't find you. I have you hidden too well. I kidnapped you."

My stomach twisted. If I had any hope here, it was that Detective Burke would find me. He knew where I was, and when I didn't appear, he'd insist on looking around. But if Baby was right, all potential rescuers had come and gone. Surely, he was still looking, and he might circle back here eventually to be more thorough, but by then, it would be too late. I had to help myself.

"Don't be afraid, I'm not going to hurt you. I'm only going to keep you for a little while. Try not to wiggle, though. You're inside something that came from my old pizzeria."

"I know what it is," I snapped, and my words echoed in a room that sounded big and empty.

She kept talking, and I wondered if she could even hear me. Maybe she wasn't programmed to interact. Maybe I was just talking to a mindless hunk of metal. "I don't think it was ever used, at least not the way it was meant to be used. Too dangerous. It's just big enough for one person to fit inside, but just barely."

I had to test her capabilities, so I ventured a question. "Where am I?"

"You're in the Scooping Room. Do you know why they call it the Scooping Room?"

"Um, no?" It didn't sound like something that had anything to do with animatronics.

"It's because, dummy, this is the room where they use the Scooper." Her know-it-all tone sounded just like Liz when she said that, if not her voice. "I thought that would be obvious. Isn't that a fun name for something? The Scooper. It sounds like something you would use for ice cream or custard or sprinkles. It sounds like something you would want at your birthday party to ensure that you get a heaping portion of every good thing. I wonder, though, if you were a freshly opened pint of ice cream, how you would feel about something with that name. Thankfully, I don't think a freshly opened pint of ice cream feels anything at all."

I didn't think an animatronic should feel or think anything at all, and I opened my mouth to tell her as much, but she cut me off. "Uh-oh. It sounds like someone else is in the building. Sssshhh."

"Okay, bring her over. Forward." The exhausted, matter-of-fact voice could only come from a human worker. He instructed another shuffling person to put something down – probably an animatronic. They operated by a faint light that was too far away to help me see the room beyond my mask.

Should I call out to them or not? I didn't trust Baby, but right now, the workers weren't in any danger. The animatronics weren't haunting them, for whatever reason. I didn't want to drag them into my own personal nightmare, so I stayed silent and listened to them chat about how she'd broken down. "Some kind of hardware malfunction?" one guessed.

"Well, look, I have to be somewhere in fifteen minutes, and this place gives me the creeps. Can we just get this over with?" This man had the right idea. "It's all automated. We don't have to be here for it. Just get her on the rollers, and we can go."

But what was all automated? I itched to ask them, but I realized I'd find out soon enough, if only I could see anything. They left just before some kind of heavy machinery – the Scooper – clanged to life and started to buzz. There was banging – maybe the animatronic bouncing along the rollers towards the Scooper.

I must've been right next to the rollers, because they vibrated the suit. I watched helplessly as the springlocks began to unwind.

Then Ballora's face slid into view, past one eye hole, then shuddering to a stop in front of the other.

"There is something very important that I've learned how to do over time," Baby told me. "Do you know what that is? How to pretend. Do you ever play make believe? Pretend to be one way when you are really the other?" That was my life all the time, but I didn't know if Circus Baby would understand the ways that humans pretend to be what they're not. "It's very important. Ballora never learns, but I do. They think there is something wrong on the inside. The only thing that matters is knowing... how... to... pretend."

This was many levels of sinister, but I couldn't be sure exactly what she was pretending. Were the animatronics only pretending to be mindless when lots of people were around? Had human workers shut Ballora down because she'd been acting in a way they didn't want her to? If so, I had to side with the humans on this one, even as I stared at the round eyes and the tiny nose of the familiar profile.

Ballora was so close that I could've touched her if only I could've lifted my arm.

A warning alarm blared in a wall in slow, steady tones.

Something below my field of vision slammed into Ballora. She screeched, and her plastic plates wobbled open, then shut.

It slammed into her again. And again.

She only screamed the first time. After that, the only sounds were of things breaking. Metal bits rained to the floor, and the animatronic slumped over – or what was left of it.

It had twisted so that it faced me now, and I could see lights flickering in its blind eyes.

Baby opened the face plates for me. "That way they can find you on the cameras," she said. I still didn't see her. "Now all you have to do is wait."

She could've done that earlier, if she'd wanted the workers to find me. "Did you want me to see that… Scooper thing?" I asked. No response. I tried again. "What do you want me to do?"

"I'd recommend that you keep the springlocks wound up. Your breathing and your heartbeat are causing them to come loose. You don't want them to get too loose, trust me."

"I know that, but how? My arms are trapped."

Silence answered me.

My head had a little room to move, so I experimented with ways to reach the springlocks. My nose and tongue could each reach some of them, but I could only get one at a time, and then, only a little bit.

As I nudged the tangy metal along with the tip of my tongue, the next surreal threat appeared. One of Ballora's tiny dancer friends crawled up the suit and stared at me with vacant eyes and an open mouth frozen in a mockery of a smile. It tilted its head and reached one hand into my face plate.

"Oh, no you don't!" Against all logic and advice, I wriggled around and rocked the suit back and forth. The dancer fell away and clattered to the floor.

I didn't know what it meant to do inside my suit, but even touching a springlock would be enough to end me. I feverishly returned to my task, which I'd just made harder with my movements.

More little hands and feet started scaling the suit. Oh, right. Ballora had more than one little dancer. I didn't know how many.

I resisted the urge to shake them off until the next face appeared at my open face plate. I needed to get the most bang for my buck, as it were.

One firm jolt unhooked it from my suit, along with the ones below it.

The springlocks unwound some more.

I kept up this pattern: Shake. Wind. Wind. Wind. Shake. Wind. Wind.

Ballora's dead face watched my progress.

My brain told me I was there for hours, but there was no way my body could've kept going for that long. It was probably only minutes.

Powerful lights flooded the room. The mini ballerinas scampered away.

I finished winding the locks just before Detective Burke burst into the room with his gun in his hand but pointed at the floor. A man in uniform accompanied him, and the two of them checked the room before holstering their guns and approaching me. Clay stepped between my suit and the roller, blocking my view of Ballora. "I'm going to get you out of there," he promised, reaching out.

"Stop," I croaked. I'd barely spoken all day, and I'd had nothing to eat or drink. Either the word was too quiet to hear, or he thought he knew better than the semi-conscious teenager, because he didn't stop. "Boobytrap!" I blurted, and he froze inches from the metal.

It wasn't the most accurate word for the situation, but it made him lower his hand and back up until he bumped the roller and Ballora's remains. She crumpled even farther. "What kind of trap?"

I gave him my most intelligent, well-articulated account of the situation, which amounted to: "Suit… kill… me. Need to… lock."

His narrowed eyes flicked back and forth across the suit. "Fitzgerald, find a technician or someone who can deactivate this." The uniformed officer sprinted away, and Clay tried a reassuring smile. "Don't worry. We'll get you out of this."

I knew as well as he did that everyone had already gone home for the night. There was no telling how long the officer would take, or when something else in the facility would vibrate enough to undo all my hard work. I gently cleared my throat and attempted some multi-syllabic words. "I can… deactivate. Need… hurry."

"You know how to undo this? You're sure?"

"I'm… the… technician."

He was clearly weighing the urgency against the prospect of trusting me with my own fate. "Let me get you some water," he said.

"No!" The explosion of the word racked my throat and body with the urge to cough. A series of little coughs sputtered out instead of one big one. Then I explained, "Water… triggers it. Motion… triggers it."

"I'll be careful," he promised. "If you can't talk, I can't hear how to get you out of that thing." I grunted, which he took as assent. He jogged away, and I stared at the now-illuminated room and the empty Ballora in front of me.

Her plastic plates barely clung together, but she was missing her endoskeleton. Presumably, that was what the workers had scooped. It was a violent, wasteful process, but it had been quick.

Clay returned with a cup of water that he trickled carefully into my open mouth, cupping his hand beneath my chin to catch any drops that spilled out. I could picture him feeding his son like this, at least at first. At some point, he would've realized that baby food spills were inevitable and he'd have to embrace the mess. Or maybe he never accepted messes. His house had been as neat and clean as any I'd ever seen.

After I'd sipped the water, I ran my tongue around the inside of my mouth. I still had a bad taste there from the springlocks, but I was ready to whisper a little more. "There should be a special key. A springlock key. It's about the size of your finger, but bent, with a metal hook on the end." It was a rough description, but it was enough.

Clay waved the tool in front of me. "Is this it?"

"Yes!" I coughed some more then talked him through the suit removal process. First, he cranked the springlocks all the way into place, and then he worked on releasing the mechanisms that kept the suit itself together.

"Who put you in here?" he asked, as he twisted, minding the direction of his rotations.

"I was knocked out. I didn't see. I just know what this suit is. From my dad."

"Could he have put you here?"

"I don't think so."

"He was the only one besides me, Betty, and my men who knew you'd be down here, right?"

"The animatronics knew." I tried that phrase out for size, and it drew the inevitable look of concern. "They were programmed with artificial intelligence… with security features and things. I think they were the only other ones down here with me, at least until I woke up."

"Artificial intelligence. Like HAL?" he asked, referencing the homicidal computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey. I could've given him some more modern examples in popular culture, but it got the point across.

"Sure."

He popped the chest plate open, and I risked sucking in a deep breath. "How advanced could those be?"

I stared at him as levelly as possible. "Very."

"Hm." That was all he had to say on the subject. I could tell that he didn't want to argue, and that Dad would remain at the top of his suspect list.

The head came off entirely, then the limbs, and then finally, the rest of the torso was removed. I fell into the detective's arms. He pulled me away from the fallen pieces and lowered me to the ground.

I stared at the remnants of the springlock suit that had just encased me, seeing it from the outside for the first time. It looked like a chubby-faced girl, with red cheeks that were now splayed open and pigtails that stuck out from a hollow head. Pieces of a red dress and white skin lay in no particular order, and her left hand still clutched a microphone.

It was Circus Baby.

It was the scooped-out remains of Circus Baby.

Who or what had I been talking to all this time?

I didn't know all the details, but I had the broad strokes. She'd told me herself: she was a pretender.

I whipped my head to take in the rest of the Scooping Room, as if the pretend-Baby was lurking there. She wasn't in the room, certainly. I only saw Clay, two disemboweled animatronics, a roller, and a digger-like claw that had to be the Scooper. This was attached to the wall between two observation windows on a retractable arm that was currently folded up. I knew how fast it could shoot out, though, and I found myself ducking under the rollers to keep from looking at it.

Clay gave me a minute there then helped me away. He insisted on taking me to a hospital, despite my protests. They gave me some fluids. They checked my scrapes and bruises – most notably a set of purple marks on my shoulders and hips from where Foxy had landed on me. He'd avoided crushing my chest, which was… almost kind of him.

The doctors told me to rest there. I wanted to go home as soon as possible, but they insisted on monitoring me for a few hours. When I shut my eyes, Foxy's face jumped out at me, just like it had jumped out at Evan once upon a time.

"Evan," I murmured sleepily.

Something rustled off to the side. Something was in the room with me. I hissed and checked the area, but it was only Clay Burke, looking at me over a paperback western novel.

"I'm okay, you know," I said.

"Clearly."

He returned to his book. I returned to a light sleep, punctuated by Foxy, Ballora, Circus Baby, my father, and that strange Scooper. Each nightmare jerked me awake temporarily, so I saw the doctor when he arrived to say I could be discharged if I insisted. "I'd rather keep him here overnight," he said, and Clay nodded.

"I'd rather sleep at home," I said. "It's too noisy here. I've had quite enough machines lately."

"I can stay with you for the night," Clay offered, and when I shook my head, he amended, "Or post officers outside your house? They won't wake you up." I shook my head again, and he sighed and shifted into an overly-patient tone. "Someone attacked you. We don't know who it was or what his purpose was. He might try again."

"I'll be fine. Thank you. I just want to forget all of this for a little bit." That was… I wanted to forget it for the length of time it took to watch a soap opera or two and scarf down some microwaved popcorn.

"William… I mean, Michael…" I stiffened, and he flushed. "I'm sorry, I…"

"Thank you for the rescue, Detective, but I'll be fine from here."

"Okay. Okay, I'll have someone drive you."

I was about to refuse the offer, but it was the most convenient way to get home. I tamped down on my pride and nodded. I also nodded through all of the doctor's instructions about rest and fluids and a follow-up visit with my primary care physician.

Then I silently rode home in the front seat of a police car, watched some TV, and forced my stiff limbs into clean clothes.

I didn't know whether my unseen bosses expected me to show up or not. I'd never met them. I didn't know if they were aware of the attack or anything else that had been happening recently. I didn't know if my father knew, either. He didn't call, but I didn't expect him to. I had his number, for when the job was over.

I peeked out my front blinds, saw a suspicious dark car parked across the street, and left by the back door.

It was time for Night 5 with pretend-Circus Baby.

I popped a stick of gum into my mouth. I barely tasted the rush of minty freshness. It was more about the repetitive chewing movement calming me down.

My Hand Unit seemed to think I was supposed to be there, because it welcomed me back to my last night of the week with its own brand of encouragement. "Some of the most valued qualities that we like to see in new employees are determination, fearlessness and a genuine disregard for instinctive self-preservation. You've earned your one-week bonus which will be given to you in the form of a delightful gift basket, the cost of which will be taken out of your next paycheck."

"Not much of a bonus, then, is it?" I sighed. I wouldn't have minded the cash basket. At least I'd still get my money that way. But I knew my Hand Unit better than that, and I expected it to act up in some way.

It didn't disappoint. By the time the elevator was grinding to a halt at the bottom, my computer decided I wanted a basket of Exotic Butters.

"I guess I can put them on my popcorn," I decided. "I'll just have to make it from kernels instead of the bags." The computer didn't care. Why should it?

All of the computers and animatronics around here were just machines.

It felt more and more like my choices didn't matter. Everything else was running through pre-scripted actions and dialogue, and I was just along for the ride. But who wrote the script? Was it Dad? Down in this basement, it all seemed bigger than him.

"Please be aware that there are still two technicians on-site today," the Hand Unit said. "Try to avoid interfering with their work if possible. Also, feel free to ask them why they are still there, and encourage them to go home."

"Other people?" I guess it made sense. They probably had to work extra to clean up the mess from last night. They probably had to figure out what happened and write up some reports.

I crawled into the Control Module, and the Hand Unit directed me to check on Ballora, which drew me up short. Did it not know that she'd been scooped?

I followed orders, pushed the button, and gasped at the flickering outline of a dead man hanging over the stage.

I checked Foxy's side. Another technician hung there.

Were these men the ones I'd heard last night? Did they get where they were trying to go before coming back?

While I asked myself these questions, the Hand Unit said, "Great! It looks like everything is as it should be in Funtime Auditorium. Your task today will involve more maintenance work. Circus Baby had a rough day and is in need of repair."

The fact that she'd been scooped, too, and that I'd been wearing her springlock suit less than 24 hours ago meant nothing to the machine. What did it mean to me?

To start with, it meant that I had to sneak through Funtime Auditorium again to get to parts and services. That was where Baby waited with some of my answers. She waited past a roaming Foxy, plus whoever killed those two technicians.

Animatronics didn't hang people. That could only be a human killer. Did my father do that? He was the most logical suspect, or at least the default.

I touched the vent cover for Funtime Auditorium, drew back, and then touched it again.

Foxy was behind that vent, or whatever Foxy had become.

Answers were there, too. Answers about Elizabeth. Answers about the technicians. Maybe even answers about those kids who went missing years ago.

I opened the vent cover and ducked inside.

I was too careless last time. I'd moved too quickly or left my light on too long. I'd practically been walking in a trance. Now, every nerve was sharp with fear and pain.

The flashlight wobbled in my hand, and I flicked it on and off as quickly as I could – almost too quickly to see. I advanced little by little, listening to the taps of my rubber soles and the answering slither of metal dragging across the floor. Foxy didn't sound like that, did he?

Bile rose in my throat, but I kept it down. I tried not to look at Foxy in my mind's eye, or at the dead technicians.

I reached parts and services, and I stared into Circus Baby's blank face. The technicians had reassembled her, more or less. It was still only the outer shell and whatever was absolutely necessary to hold her together. There was no endoskeleton inside. No eyes. Nothing. Of course there weren't. They'd already been scooped.

My Hand Unit started telling me to take Baby to a conveyer before it was unceremoniously cut off.

"Can you hear me?" a voice asked. It sounded like it was coming from Baby, though that was impossible. "I'm pretending. Remember how I said that I could pretend? The cameras are watching, I must be careful not to move. Something bad happened yesterday."

"I know," I snapped.

"Something bad always happens," she continued. "I don't want it to happen again. There is something bad inside of me. I'm broken. I can't be fixed. I'm going to be taken to the Scooping Room soon, but it's not going to fix what's wrong with me. What is bad is always left behind. Will you help me?"

"Sure," I said, not sure yet if I meant it or not.

"I want you to save what is good so the rest can be destroyed and never recovered, but you must be careful. Ballora is here, in the room with us."

Surely, that was impossible, too. Ballora had been scooped, just like Baby. Maybe this really was Baby's voice, playing on a pre-recorded track. Maybe that's why I could hear her long after she'd been destroyed. Whether or not she was speaking the truth, I stayed quiet. I did as I was told.

Following her instructions, I retrieved a memory card from her body and put it in my Hand Unit so she could speak to me. Maybe her voice had come from the suit all along, not the endoskeleton. Maybe she had been speaking to me.

That would've been a relief, except that Circus Baby had killed my sister. When she asked me to send her body away to be destroyed, I was happy to comply.

I did hesitate before loading her memory card, though. It was a bad idea to load random files onto a computer, but then again, I didn't care about this computer or about Afton Robotics. Baby could corrupt their whole system with viruses for all I cared.

"You must follow my instructions in Funtime Auditorium," Baby said, this time from the device in my hands, which rang out too loudly in a room where Ballora might be lurking. "Ballora is going to follow you. She will try to catch you. I will help you avoid her. She will not follow you inside the Scooping Room, she is afraid. Go back now."

I'd just spent plenty of quality time in the Scooping Room, and I was a little afraid of it myself, but I was more afraid of the giant animatronic than I was of the empty room. But only by a little.

I retreated through Funtime Auditorium, following Baby's directions. I had to, since I didn't actually know where the Scooping Room was. Presumably, it was off this auditorium somewhere. I wished I'd had a map of this place, or that it was better lit.

As I crept along, I thought about what Baby wanted. She wanted to destroy her body – a body that had been used to kill Elizabeth. If Baby was telling the truth, she hadn't wanted that. She hadn't wanted to trap me last night, either. Get rid of the bad. I was 100% behind that.

Was there anything good, though? Could William Afton make anything good? Could an artificial intelligence choose to be good?

The slither steps got closer to me, and Baby addressed them directly. "He is here to help, Ballora. He is not here to hurt us. Ballora, he is here to help us."

We reached the Scooping Room then, and I shut myself away from Ballora… or whatever had been in there with me. Had bits of Ballora been dragging themselves along the floor? Was that what I heard? They were certainly no dancer's steps.

No, it wasn't Ballora. A soft grey light strobed across the room, enough for me to see broken pieces of animatronics – Ballora included – littering the floor. I got a computer warning about being in a dangerous area, but I didn't need the computer to tell me that.

"You are in the Scooping Room now," Baby said.

"I know. I remember it. Who are… what are all of these?" I gestured at the floor, even though the chip in my computer probably couldn't register my movements.

"Funtime Foxy has already been here today," she told me, and I picked out some of his remains in the pile. She continued, "Funtime Freddy has already been here today." And there was the bear with the top hat. "Ballora has already been here today." I'd already seen the dancer. "Circus Baby has already been here today."

She let that sink in. So, it was back to being a pretend-Baby. I don't know why I thought I was starting to understand this place.

A burst of movement exploded from the animatronics at my feet. Wiry hands seized me and dragged me backwards.

"No! Please!" I writhed and thrashed and kicked at my captor. My feet slammed against metal. There was a slight give, but my captor didn't relent.

I twisted around to find a strange sight. The thing that dragged me kicking and screaming across the room looked like an endoskeleton, or like pieces of different endoskeletons all wound together. It wore a white mask with a clown hat, but no other suit.

It was just… just the innards of an animatronic. And it was hauling me directly into the path of the Scooper. "No, I don't want to go!"

"I've been out before," the endoskeleton creature said, still in Baby's voice, "but they always put me back. They always put us back inside." It clamped my arms in place, using something metal to tie me to the rollers. The Scooper loomed in front of me, with two windows on either side of it.

"My father will put you back inside!"

It clamped my torso into place, too.

"What do you want from me?"

The creature half-crawled and half-slithered out of the room and appeared at a window. "There is nowhere for us to hide here. There is nowhere to go, when we look like this. But if we looked like you, then we could hide. If we looked like you, then we would have somewhere to go." It began pressing buttons from back behind its screen and offered me one empty reassurance: "The Scooper only hurts for a moment."