Picking up his bag, Mike crawled into the vent. He'd need a new job soon if he wanted to keep funding his industrial-grade supply of clothes bleach, and cheap cologne. Making his way through, he noticed that the vent was full of cobwebs and spiders. Ignoring it, Mike pulled himself toward the Primary Control Module.
Being back here after years had its own twisted sense of nostalgia. Dust hung in the beam of a flickering monitor. No one had been down here in a long time.
Somewhere in the office and at the other end, behind a false wall, his father had kept some remnants. Mike knew where it was—just a matter of getting there.
The screens in the module flickered on all at once. A face filled them—Funtime Foxy's head, but in different colors, with text reading, Please stand by.
Mike stopped to observe the screens.
"Well, well, well." Her voice crackled through the speakers, playful and distorted. "Look who crawled out of the scrap heap. Aren't you that technician from years ago? Eggs Benedict, right? Aren't you supposed to be dead?"
Lolbit. William's abandoned project, a program built to stand beside Funtime Foxy but never given a physical body. Another piece of half-finished work left behind when his father moved on to bigger atrocities.
"I guess I got better," Mike said finally.
"You're pretty calm about the whole being dead thing. Got used to it?"
"You'd be amazed how quickly death loses its novelty when you're just sitting around watching reruns."
"I'm curious." Her tone sharpened. "The last time you were here didn't exactly end well for you. Why come back? Could it be that, since you're back from the dead, you think you can't die again?"
"What I'm here for doesn't have anything to do with you."
"So secretive." A teasing edge. "Tell you what. Help me, Bonnet, and Yenndo get out of this place, and maybe we can mutually benefit from each other."
"Why would I release dangerous animatronics?"
"Dangerous? Us?" A laugh echoed through the speakers. "I'm a program in the system. The other two are a hand puppet and an endoskeleton. Besides, you're trapped down here with us, and even if there's a way out, we will make sure you can never leave."
She wasn't entirely wrong, but Bonnet and Yenndo wouldn't be hard to deal with if they tried something. Not that they could.
"If you're in the system," he said, "why haven't you opened the elevator to let those two out?"
"Because half the building doesn't have power, including the elevator. And the moment it finally becomes usable, you crash it. Brilliant work, really."
"Not exactly my fault it was unstable."
"Sure, sure." Her tone turned sly. "So… what's it going to be? Are you going to help us or would you prefer to stay trapped down here with us forever?"
Mike was silent. He wasn't sure if he could trust an A.I. and those other animatronics, but they were more useful with him than left down here. He was trapped anyway, so he might as well see what their deal was.
"I'm only going to help as long as you guys listen to exactly what I say."
"Perfect! There should be a USB drive somewhere in the office. Plug it into the monitor—there should be a USB port on the side. I'll transfer myself onto it, and you can carry me out in your pocket."
"And Yenndo and Bonnet?"
"They'll be there waiting for you in the office."
Mike made his way through the vent to the office door near the stage and pushed it open slowly.
An endoskeleton stood in the corner, tall, skeletal, stripped of any outer shell, Yenndo.
In one hand, it held a small pink hand puppet with blue eyes, red cheeks, and a tiny bow; it was Bonnet, a reskin of Bon Bon.
"Hello!" Bonnet's voice burst out. "It's you! The technician, Eggs Benedict! You're getting us out, right? Right??"
"Yeah, that seems to be the plan and also the name is Michael or just Mike."
"Oh good! I was starting to think we'd be stuck down here forever!"
"If Baby tore everyone apart to build Ennard," Mike asked, "how did you three get left behind?"
"Well, we were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time," Bonnet said. "I was in a drawer. Yenndo was in storage. Lolbit couldn't physically do anything."
"I see," Mike said, looking around the office. The desk was cluttered with old paperwork and old dusty monitors. He turned on a terminal on the desk, then swept the clutter aside—old invoices, a dried-out pen, a USB drive buried under a stack of sticky notes. Lolbit's only way out.
He plugged the drive into the monitor. The screen flickered. Lolbit's face appeared, glitching slightly.
"There we go. Give me a second to transfer."
Lines of code scrolled rapidly across the screen. Then it went dark.
Bonnet giggled. "This is so exciting! We're finally leaving! Aren't you excited, Yenndo?"
"I guess so," Yenndo said quietly.
"Alright," Mike said. "Let's find what I'm looking for, then we look for a way out."
He moved to the back wall, scanning the surface until he found what he was looking for. "Help me with this."
Yenndo stepped forward without a word. Together, they pushed the hidden wall aside. It opened with a low grinding sound, revealing a dark hallway.
"Whoa!" Bonnet's eyes went wide. "We never knew about this place! It looks cool!"
"Why is there a hidden room here?" Bonnet asked.
Mike didn't answer right away. The room was clearly hidden so nobody would find his father's twisted experiments; he even had cameras to observe everything in this place.
"I don't think you want to know," Mike said.
Bonnet went quiet.
The hallway opened into the bedroom. Mike stopped just inside the doorway, scanning the floor. His father had been careful, but Mike knew where to look.
He crossed to the corner, knelt, and pressed his palm against the baseboard. A section of the floor shifted under his hand, a false panel, designed to look like the rest of the wood. He lifted it. Underneath, in a shallow compartment, sat a dusty, closed box.
He pulled it out and lifted the latch.
Inside, a syringe-like injector. Beside it, ten small vials, each filled with a faintly glowing silver liquid. Mike picked up the injector. This was what he'd come for. The thing that might save Jeremy.
Yenndo leaned closer. "…What is it?"
"Remnant."
Mike closed the box and stood. "Alright. Now let's get out of—"
Mike took a step toward the door. His leg didn't move the way it should; it was getting wobbly, causing him to stumble, catching himself against the wall.
Yenndo's eyes turned toward him. "Are you ok?"
The endoskeleton's voice was steady. Too steady. Mike tried to answer, but the words took too long to reach his mouth.
"Yenndo, what should we do?" Bonnet's voice was suddenly faint.
Everything seemed to move and bend in an unexplainable way. His vision was sliding, the surroundings changing into something else. A completely different place.
"Something's wrong with him; let's quickly get him out of here," Yenndo said.
Mike tried to speak but couldn't. The lights flickered.
Then everything went dark.