(Part III)

Chapter 2: First Night

After the policemen left, I ventured out of my house for the first time in weeks. I bought strong cologne and more food. I made copies of all the blueprints I'd stolen and buried the originals in a locked box near Evan's grave. There still wasn't a marker, or any sign that the area had ever been disturbed. There wasn't even a lump, and grass had grown over it again. No more creepy crawlies.

I went home and cooked a proper meal. While I ate, I sorted through the blueprints to decide which I was going to show the police. The rest went back into my closet.

I preemptively pulled my two dining room chairs into the living room, and then I watched The Immortal and the Restless and went to bed.

I set my alarm for 8, but I woke up an hour early to a banging at my front door. I dashed toward the noise, forgetting to pull on shoes or a hoodie. I had only a long-sleeved tee and a pair of sweats on when I checked the window and threw open the door to admit the expected visitors.

Before I could get a word out, Andrew Fitzgerald lunged at me. He tackled me to the floor almost exactly like Foxy had, except that the officer's hands were around my throat. He unleashed a string of expletives as I pushed and twisted to shake him loose and Clay Burke hauled him off from behind. "Enough!" the detective ordered.

We were starting to pry Andrew free when he screamed, "You people are all insane! I thought it was just you and your father, but no! That entire restaurant and anyone who ever had anything to do with it it should all be in jail!"

Clay finally yanked him off and deposited him on the laminate floor, where he collapsed, trembling. Clay shut the front door.

"Which one did you meet?" I wheezed, rubbing my throat.

"I spent my night," Andrew said, over-enunciating his words, "being stalked by a plastic bunny and a duck. I had to wear a stupid bear mask so they wouldn't murder me. I had to wind up a music box and watch cameras and vents and shine a light down this big dark hallway, and everything in there wanted me dead!"

"Pull yourself together," Clay told him before offering me a hand up. He tensed when he touched my cold skin, but he did pull me to my feet.

"Come on.," I said, and led them to the living room. We all settled there, Andrew with a huff, and I asked, "If I'm understanding you right, the new restaurant has plastic versions of the old cast: Freddy Fazbear, Chica the chicken, Bonnie the bunny, and Foxy the fox? You didn't mention Foxy, but they usually go together. Maybe they were Funtime versions?"

Andrew crossed his arms. "Funtime? I sure wasn't having any fun."

"Fitzgerald, play him the tape," Clay prompted.

"Tape?" I asked.

Andrew reluctantly pulled out a tape recorder. "I got a call at the office when I started my shift. It was obviously a pre-recorded message, since it was welcoming me to my new 'summer job'. The Phone Guy told me about the robots and how to hide from them, basically. Luckily, I recorded the call."

He played it for me, and I listened to a cheerful, familiar voice giving the new security guard the rundown. Apparently, the animatronics wandered around at night. If they saw a human while in their night mode, they thought the human was an endoskeleton that needed to be put into a costume, which would kill the person, unless the animatronic happened to find a wearable suit.

Some of them could be fooled if you wore a mask. Some could be scared away by flashing lights. Some could be lured away by the sound of a music box, which played deep in the restaurant but was wound remotely from the security office.

Also, they had a facial recognition system to detect predators. They hoped this would keep kids safe and there wouldn't be any incidents like the ones at the old restaurant.

"That makes sense," I said, to which Andrew responded,

"No, it does not!"

Clay held up a hand to him then said to me, "Your turn. Tell us about your father's work."

"Alright." I'd carefully rehearsed what I was going to say. "I'll tell you what William is after. It's going to sound crazy, but you've probably noticed that that's a trend with him. So, I'll ask that you just listen for now, and that you don't record any of this."

"Mind if we take notes?"

"Go ahead." I cleared my throat. "It all started in nine years ago. Back then, William and Uncle Henry had rival businesses. William opened his first, but Henry's was far more successful. In 1978, Henry had a Halloween party at his restaurant. His wife and twin kids were there. Everyone was in costume. At some point during the night, they put the twins to sleep in the back and left them alone for a few minutes. When they came back, Charlie was still there, but Sammy was gone. That was because William visited the party, and when he saw his opportunity, he took Sammy. And killed him." I drew a shaky breath, and Clay asked,

"Did he admit this to you?"

"As good as. He said that when Sammy died, something physical changed. I don't know what, but he was convinced that Sammy's spirit – or Remnant, as he puts it – was still… with us, in that physical object."

"Of all the…" Andrew started to say. Clay shushed him and kept scribbling in his notepad.

"Remnant," I repeated. "William thinks it comes from the pain and fear of the dying. He was convinced he'd made some sort of discovery, but he didn't know what he wanted to do with it yet. Then Henry showed up and asked if he wanted to be business partners. William was creative; Henry was a technical genius. It seemed only natural. William agreed, and while they merged their businesses, Henry taught William about robotics. William started creating animatronics of his own, ones with designs that Henry never saw. Ones with designs to kidnap children."

I produced the blueprint for Circus Baby and passed it to the others. "Her stomach makes ice cream. It also has a claw and a cavity inside meant for trapping children. She was programmed to wait for one child to be alone in the room. As it turned out, Elizabeth was that child." I squeezed my eyes shut. "She begged William to play with Circus Baby. He always said no. But that day, at the restaurant opening, she sneaked away. Evan followed her, but Elizabeth didn't see him. Neither did Baby."

At that moment, I found out that I could still cry when I was undead. "William, um… William pretended there was a gas leak and closed the restaurant so no one would look into his designs too closely. Maybe he even had a twinge of guilt; I don't know. But he let that project rest until Evan died. You know that part. You already know that he started drinking, he got angry, and he murdered Charlie. At that point, he decided to start up his project again."

Clay was watching me intently. Whatever he thought about William's theories, he didn't interrupt me to argue, but he did have a question. "Did he think there was… Remnant when Evan and Charlie died?"

"Exactly. And he wanted more. He wanted to extract it and inject it into something else. He wanted to take life and give it to something else. Specifically, he was making human-like animatronics, ones that would stand in for Liz and mum and probably Evan. He would give them the Remnant, and then he would have his family back." I blinked away my tears, stared at their incredulous faces, and reiterated, "In his mind, anyway."

"You think," Andrew repeated slowly, "that your father murdered my brother and four other kids because he wanted to experiment on them and then go all Dr. Frankenstein and bring some robot kids to life."

"Not only that, but I think he's going to kill again, and again until he gets what he wants."

"Which will be never!"

And that was where I had to stop. That was all they were ready for. Maybe it was all they'd ever be ready for. I shrugged. "I'm just telling you what he told me. And what he wrote on his designs." I passed over the other blueprint I had for them – the one with the Scooper and its Remnant injector. "You've seen this before, too," I said. "It had just scooped out Ballora before you came to get me, and it put something into her endoskeleton. The thing that William calls Remnant."

"What is it actually?" Clay asked.

"Who knows? But I am sure he's continuing his experiments, which means he's going to kill again if we don't stop him."

"So, the short version," Andrew summarized, "is that William Afton is crazy. But we already knew that. Why are we wasting our time with this freak, sir?"

"Because William has told Michael a lot of things," Clay replied with a sigh. "Because William might try to contact him again. And because Michael is a victim here, too."

"Hang on…" I started to protest, before falling silent. My cheeks warmed, and I hung my head.

"There's nothing for you to be ashamed of, son. It's all your father's doing, not yours. And you've been very brave."

That last sentence sounded a little patronizing, but he meant well. "Don't worry," I said, drawing on my old spirit, "I'll take at least a couple days to rest before diving back in."

Clay pinched the bridge of his nose and said, "Mike…"

"What? I think you've realized by now that you can't stop me from getting involved, and it'll go better for all of us if we work together."

"Hang on, now. Why don't you wait and see what we can do before you dive back in? Andrew has a five-night trial period on his new job. It was a rough start, but I'm sure he'll have a handle on it soon. If you meddle, you might blow his cover."

"I managed not to get mauled, at least," Andrew bragged, apparently forgetting his earlier panic.

I nodded. "Okay, Andrew. Let's see how you do with your five nights. I won't interfere until that's over, at least."

"Good." The two of them left with the blueprints, and I tried to catch up on some sleep. Unfortunately, I only dreamed of plastic Funtime animatronics, except they all became distorted. Chica lost her beak. Foxy turned into my old Mangle toy and crawled around the ceiling. I woke up panting and sweating, and I shivered under my covers.

Then I went about my normal life, which was looking for a new job and submitting my voucher from Circus Baby's so I could start receiving my monthly exotic butters. It was ridiculous that I was getting paid in butter, but I wasn't going to let it go to waste.

When life gives you exotic butters, you take melt them and use them to flavor your popcorn. Hopefully, they'd taste good, but I'd eat them either way.

The next day, Clay Burke was back at my door. "Five more kids are missing," he said without preamble.

I blinked and tried to figure out how much trouble I was in. "I don't have an alibi," I said, "and I don't know where my father was."

"No, but I think I know where your father was."

"Then why are you here?"

"I'm here to say… you're up to bat, kid."