The last night was perfect, finally some opportunity for Charlie to forget the tiring investigation and focus on satisfying his mortal desires. He was lucky to have a woman like Elizabeth by his side, she adored the time they spent together as much as he did. But when the sun rose again, the time has come to return to their work, which so far, was as simultaneously simple and complicated as understanding what the data Charlie took from the department contained. It was never deciphered and therefore never used by anyone within the department. As to what its origins were, the only trace led to Hano Akira, a man who knew much more about the situation around Fazbear Inc than he admitted when he met Charlie. If they are unable to do anything, he could always call Cody and ask him to track down Hano for him.
"How are you doing?" The door behind him opened as Elizabeth stepped into the room, making Charlie turn around. She was carrying a plate with some biscuits. "Made those so you don't get hungry during your detective work." She put them on the desk before Charlie's computer and put her hand on his shoulder.
"Thanks, Liz, you're the best." Charlie said and kissed her on the cheek. The woman looked over the desk and was quick to notice that the portable drive with the message was already inserted into his laptop.
"How is it going?"
"Slow…I ran it through some programs and this is indeed the message from Akira. I was just about to try opening it up." Charlie grabbed the mouse and made it hover towards the file. "Two files here, both still encrypted, but apparently I can try open them up."
"Oh, wow, I have a good timing, then." Elizabeth chuckled and sat on the bed near the desk. "Mind if I look?"
"No, of course not, it would be much harder for me to take those without you. Now, let's see…" He looked over the two files, one of which bore the name "Tapes", while the other was named "OR".
"Is that an acronym or…Well, 'or'?" Elizabeth wondered.
"Probably an acronym, wouldn't have used a capital otherwise. I'd say we start with the tapes one, it's marked as the first on the drive."
"Sure thing."
Charlie sighed and attempted to open the file. What he saw almost immediately was a black square in the middle of his screen with twenty blank spaces and some writing underneath it.
ENTER PASSWORD
"Well, here is where they failed, I suppose." Charlie sighed.
"Is that a password made of 20 characters? Who would even remember such a long one?"
"Hano must have it written down, he doesn't want anyone else to crack it."
"Are you going to try, anyway?"
"Yes." Charlie said. "Assuming this isn't the most basic of passwords, I won't be able to crack it, but at leas we can see how it will react to a wrong answer. Now…" He typed 12345678900987654321 into the boxes and pressed enter.
INCORRECT PASSWORD
ACCESS DENIED
"You expected something else?" Elizabeth raised an eyebrow.
"Hm…I have a decoding program here, courtesy of Cody." Charlie said before attempting to boot it up. "It probably won't work, but I want to know what level of security we're dealing with here."
"And then?"
"We'll find a way to contact a more efficient hacker or better yet, Hano Akira himself." Charlie said.
"You've met with him once, right? Did he seem suspicious back then?"
"He did, but most of it could be written off as just another scientist seeing a pattern to the Stalker's abductions, I didn't know he had some secret files buried in our archive. I wonder if he's Alison's former worker, as well…"
As Charlie relayed his thoughts, the process finally began, but it did not get past 3%.
SYSTEM FAIL
"So it's well protected…Unsurprisingly so."
1 VIRUS DETECTED ON YOUR COMPUTER
"Hey, what the…" Elizabeth said with suspicion
3 VIRUSES DETECTED ON YOUR COMPUTER
15 VIRUSES DETECTED ON YOUR COMPUTER
"The fuck!" Charlie exclaimed and reached for the USB disk
60 VIRUSES DETECTED ON YOUR COMPUTER
180 VIRUSES DETECTED ON Y
He plugged it out, immediately stopping the process.
"Did you expect that, too?" Lizzy wondered.
"No…Not this. This is worse than I thought, not sure if it's safe to try again."
Hano Akira didn't just leave a message, he left a riddle, the one which might have been beyond their comprehension.
…
Just like Blake, Jim's aura was unmistakable. The moment Chris entered the church, he could feel this presence, it was the same man that forced him to die that now sat on his knees and prayed for forgiveness. But his aura was different to that of Blake. The night guard Chris killed was unburdened by regrets or lamentations, he has long forgotten the boy he killed and lived his own life without care or regret. Jim's soul, meanwhile, was crumbling under the crushing weight of guilt. Chris was surprised to see this, it was twelve years after all, even someone who genuinely regretted that horrid prank would've moved on by now, but not Jim. This surprise made him hesitate a few times, second guessing himself and whether he should finish the job, and as a result, he accidentally let Jim fool him and escape the church.
He couldn't allow this to happen again. No matter how much regret, he was still a vicious bully, no apology will allow Chris to live the life he got robbed of. He chased Jim outside, scouring through the darkness to see where his victim was running. He was afraid, Chris could sense his terror. The animatronic quickly traced Jim to a parking spot with a lone black car standing in there, perhaps it was his. Chris noticed Jim rushing behind it in an attempt to hide behind the trunk. Chris approached the car and scratched one of its doors, hoping that the loud, creaking sound will make his victim panic and show himself.
"Is that the best you can do, Jimmy? You can't hide from me!" Chris shouted as he approached the trunk. "I told you not to run, but you didn't listen and chose a painful death!"
What he didn't expect from Jim was a full-fledged counterattack. The priest showed himself from behind an open trunk with a gun in his hand. He didn't hesitate to fire and penetrate Chris's metal defenses. The endoskeleton fell back as he let our a spiteful hiss, he didn't feel any physical pain, but it was still a shock.
"You bastard…" Chris looked at Jim only to see a flashing image before him, the one that made Ennard hesitate and even allow some fear to overtake his own tormented soul. The silhouette before him switched, from human Jim to a tall, rugged bunny animatronic with two rows of sharp teeth, claws, and hungry dark blue eyes. One of his nightmares, a twisted form of Bonnie…Jim always wore the Bonnie mask and became the inspiration for the monster Chris fended off in the halls.
By the time the hallucination streak ended, Jim was already driving away.
"Wait! Come back!" Chris shouted, he wasn't intent on letting him go that easily. The animatronic chased the car as quickly as he could, not letting it get out of sight even for a single moment. He will tear it apart if he had to, nothing would stop him from reaching Jim. When Ennard got his chance, he jumped to the car's rood and clung onto it. "I'll kill you!" He shouted in a momentary feeling of catharsis, only realizing that it was a mistake afterwards. This gave his presence out to Jim who began trying to toss him off by steering the car around as snarly as possible. "No, you're not going anywhere!"
Chris plunged his metal claw into the car's roof, piercing a gaping hole inside. He could hear Jim's terrified screams as he reached out for him, just a little more and the vengeful spirit could grab his neck, slowly squeezing it like he did Blake's. However, just before that could happen, Jim pushed breaks, making car immediately stop and have Chris lose his balance as a result. Ennard fell off the car and landed right beside the nearest house's wall, once again forcing him to grow weaker and lose his balance. Ennard raised his head and stared directly into the glass of the car's window, he could see the silhouette of his face inside an encroaching shadow. He got away for the last time…
Just as Chris was about to jump towards the car once again, a dreadful sound disrupted his focus. A laugh…A low-pitched, loud, sadistic laughter echoing from above Chris. The fear returned once again, yet this time, it was far worse than before. Ennard couldn't move, he felt as if he got frozen above the ground, completely immobilized. Even as Jim hastily drove off, Chris couldn't help but stand silent and realize that he was surrounded by a very grim aura. He raised his eyes.
There was a large, shadowy silhouette on the nearby roof with crimson light shining from its eyes. As Chris looked at it, he felt his non-existent stomach churn. This wasn't a human, it was too big and demonic to be one. It's aura…Ir was familiar in a way, but also greatly disturbed. It was as if he was staring into a poisoned, decaying well of water.
And then it attacked.
After letting out another laugh, the beast leaped on the ground, landing just before Chris. All of this happened so quickly that the child didn't even have time to react. The beast raised its arm above Chris, ready to tear him apart, but Ennard evaded the beast's strike just before it hit.
"W…What are you?" Chris let out as the beast turned towards him, once again forcing his soul to tremble before its vile corruption. The beast paused for a moment, as if surprised by Ennard's ability to talk, this pause gave the weaker animatronic an opportunity to examine it. It has a large animalistic head with a row of sharp, bloodied teeth, a very dark gold tint on it, a purple cylinder, and a jaw on its stomach, a monster that could come straight out of Chris's worst nightmare…And then he realized that this was not an exaggeration. The design of this monster was just like the phantom Chris saw in his last nightmare before the bite. A twisted, demonic version of Fredbear, his once favorite animatronic. But…This was impossible, he simply couldn't be real! No one could've seen it besides him! Maybe it was just a hallucination, like Bonnie…Chris had to resist it. This couldn't be real, he only had to face his fears bravely… "I am not afraid of you!"
He tried to stand tall as Fredbear ran towards him, but it soon became too much to take. Chris screamed and turned away as he wanted nothing more than to run away from this place and this monster as quickly as possible. He felt Fredbear grabbing one of his metal legs, he was corporeal and very strong. Just one powerful pull and Chris could feel wires being torn away from his leg, disorienting him and making him fall on the ground.
As Chris attempted to wriggle out of Fredbear's metal claws, he felt the nightmare's grump becoming stronger. He didn't make another sound, simply continued to push for him to submit. This Fredbear was an unstoppable machine, able to terrify every soul unfortunate enough to lay eyes upon it. His last chance of escaping was to distract the nightmare somehow…Chris pulled one of his hands aside and turned around, finally bracing himself enough to look into the nightmare's eyes once again. He scratched one of them, disorienting Fredbear for a second and pushing him away. As sparks flowed from his eyes and Fredbear covered them with his arms, there was a window of opportunity for Chris to run which he gladly took.
His leg was half-broken and he couldn't move quickly, but when something as mortifying as this was on his trail, it hardly mattered, he would push himself to his limits. Chris charged into the nearest dark alleyway, starting to move even quicker as he heard the monster's steps continue to echo from behind him. He needed to think quickly and decided to latch onto the nearby trash can, a place where he could hide for a while. Chris buried himself inside the dark pit and began to pray in silence, just like his father taught him. The monster came closer and closer, Chris could even see his bloody glow tower above the can…But thankfully, Fredbear passed by it, soon disappearing behind one of the nearest walls. Chris felt a momentary relief…It was over.
He looked at his claws on the hand he used to strike at Fredbear and noticed that there some stain on them which emerged after it.
It was human flesh.
