Chapter 17 available here
Vanessa looked at the boy, who was looking back at her, the Security guard, with an odd mixture of shock, relief, and distrust. She could understand his feelings. Gregory had spent an entire night running from her, and she wanted him to suddenly believe her.
"Are... you going to kill me?" Gregory asked nervously. Vanessa looked into the eyes of the child standing before her. He looked hardened, deprived of any soul, and exhausted, all at the same time.
"No! No, I'm not going to hurt you," Vanessa replied softly. She reached into her suit's pocket where her knife was, grabbed the handle, held the blade in front of Gregory, and dropped the knife to the ground.
"You can trust me," Vanessa said in a soft, compassionate tone.
To signal her friendliness, Vanessa reached into her pocket again and pulled out the taser she took from Gregory back at Lost and Found. She reached out as if she was going to give the weapon to him. Gregory slowly extended his own shaky arm, sweat rolling down his head from anxiety. Despite this, he took the weapon from Vanessa gratefully.
"I think you deserve that. It's payment for what he made me try to do to you..." Vanessa explained, spitting out the word, 'he,' with utter hatred.
"Who's... he?" Gregory finally spoke up. He asked the question nervously, but finally felt confident to speak to the person who used to be his wannabe serial killer.
"HE is an entity named Glitchtrap, a virus who took over my body and every animatronic in this place, including Freddy. He used to be an animatronic possessed by the soul of a man named William Afton. He was behind all of those killings from the 1980s," Vanessa replied.
"Glitchtrap... he's responsible for these killings too, isn't he?" Gregory asked with a tone of surprise, despite already knowing the answer. Vanessa averted her gaze out of sadness.
"Yes... he is. You, and your friend Cassie, are the only ones who survived him. Everyone who came into contact with Glitchtrap ended up dead, except for the three of us..." Vanessa said grimly. Her eyes began to water slightly. Gregory knew the officer must've been under her control for months, which broke her mentally and emotionally.
"How long have you been under his control?" Gregory prodded.
"I've been forced to obey his commands for a year and a half..." Vanessa whispered.
Gregory's eyes widened in utter horror. He was standing before someone who likely had to endure Glitchtrap for the longest, yet escape with her sanity intact.
"Alright, we need to end this. Let's go find Freddy. Maybe then you can tell us how to defeat him?" Gregory asked.
"Freddy isn't going to trust me. Are you sure?" Vanessa asked uncertainly.
"Yeah! I'm sure he'll trust you!" Gregory exclaimed with certainty.
"Okay then... go find Freddy. I'll meet you two at Roxy Raceway," Vanessa agreed nervously.
"Well, I'll be going now!" Gregory said with a tone of finality.
Gregory sprinted out of the Security room-turned dorm and ducked into the vent that would lead down to the Observation Room. As he was crawling through the vent shaft, the sound of metal popping and echoing through the square chamber, he called Freddy on his FazWatch.
"Freddy?! Are you there? Listen, I've saved Vanny. It turns out she was Officer Vanessa! She's been under Glitchtrap's control for a year. Are you alright?!" Gregory asked loudly. His voice echoed throughout the long shaft.
"Gregory! Yes, I am okay. The news you gave me is VERY surprising indeed! Multiple STAFF Bots swarmed me and tried to attack, but I am alright. I am headed to the Lift as we speak," Freddy responded gracefully.
"Okay, good. We only have one more threat in the Pizzaplex, and that's the entity called Glitchtrap. There's a lot of stuff I don't know, but from what I do, he's the soul of some guy from the eighties," Gregory informed. Freddy made a 'humph' out of curiosity.
"Really?! Well... uh, who would this soul be?" Freddy asked uneasily. Gregory could tell, even through the FazWatch, that Freddy was alarmed. He decided to answer the animatronic's question, although off-put.
"A man named William Afton," Gregory answered.
Gregory was expecting Freddy to freak out, but surprisingly, he did not. Freddy acted as if he had EXPECTATIONS of someone named William Afton being alive.
"I expected this. Every time one of our Establishments had been constructed, it always had a connection with Afton. He was one of the company's founders. Why Fate always seems to reunite Afton with the Establishments, is beyond me. There's just so much HISTORY to this place. I am confident in the time ahead, we will discover it together," Freddy replied.
"Right. I'll see you soon!" Gregory replied. He ended the call with Freddy just after that.
~~~
Morning had come.
The Daycare Attendant was locked inside of the Daycare, which was still dark compared to the rest of the facility. The animatronics were gone, Vanny was who-knew-where, and the Attendant still lusted for blood.
The sound of ventilation air blew in the distance. The atmosphere was chilly, nerve-wracking for any human, but for the animatronic of Night, it was heavenly. He hated everything about the light, and those who dwelled in it.
However, the Animatronic's mood was anything but the paradise he knew the Pen to be. He was like a riled up predator, starving, angry, and alert. Visions and mirages of children, both sleeping and awake and afraid, taunted the artificial machinations of his mind.
But as the Attendant aimlessly wandered within the plastic walls of the play structures, around the wooden walls of the Pen, and across the foamy floors and ball pit, it was clear there was nothing for him to take. The Attendant searched madly, but with no sense of direction. He was persistent, but didn't know how to stop. Despite searching relentlessly for Gregory, the boy was nowhere to be found. Every second that passed was yet another ounce of sanity to be lost to the shadows.
"Gregory...! I am hungry. Are you too?! Why don't you come OVER, for a snack?" the Attendant called. Although he didn't eat, the machine was starving.
A second passed, then another, then another. Before he knew it, the Daycare Attendant had been locked in the Pen for thirty minutes since the end of the last hour. If he wasn't given any kind of freedom, he was going to lose it.
The Attendant's saving grace came to him when he heard the sounds of the computer booting up at the Security Desk by the wooden doors. Without a second's hesitation, the animatronic rushed to the table like a rabid animal.
"WHAT IS IT? IS IT FOOD?" the bloodthirsty animatronic yelled with an angry passion. He quickly ran to the thin, black monitor, the small creaking and tapping of his mechanical feet echoing throughout the Pen. The Attendant lunged at the monitor without much thought and pinned it to the ground, eyeing down the screen. A mechanical beep sounded from the metallic alloy pinned to the ground. Then, a sinister, deep, cold, raspy voice called to the Attendant.
"Well! You are a peculiar specimen, indeed! Maybe even better than Vanny! She will get retribution. But YOU... you will be perfect for the fulfillment of my plans..." the Voice cackled.
"WHO ARE YOU? Do you have food?! I demand blood," the Attendant demanded.
"Oh, yes... They will come for me! I have a JOB for you. And if you follow through you will be fed, rest assured! Find Freddy. Harvest the remnant, bring me back!" the Voice offered sinisterly.
Moondrop let out a chuckle, then a full-throated cackle. Every ounce of insanity he consumed through the night was then let out. The animatronic's mechanical laughs exploded instantly. He now had a chance to find the boy and draw blood. As he was laughing, the Voice let out an evenly hungry, eager growl.
"Where ARE they? I NEED TO EAT!" the Attendant demanded. His tone began to radiate the desperation that plagued the animatronic's mind not long ago.
"They are heading toward the Raceway as we speak. Meet them below," the Voice replied sinisterly.
As soon as this command was given, the lights on the screen faded away into nothingness, darkness overtaking the glass body showcasing the computer's functions. The monitor was dead, but the animatronic was anything but.
There was, however, a hindrance. While the Attendant finally had a chance to kill Gregory and his friends, it became evident to him that light was flooding the rest of the building. He had no way of reaching Gregory without turning into his Sun form.
"Ugh! I cannot reach them. The Light is taunting me!" the Attendant bemoaned.
"I can guide you."
In that moment, a chilly force, like an invisible hand, seized the machine's round head. A strong, icy wind blew into the nostrils of the face, leading to the wiring and circuitry of the machination.
Purple lights began to fill the vision of the Attendant's robotic eyes, scrambling its line of vision. He felt a Beast on the inside, something which did not exist before. Invisible hands on the inside reached toward the arms on the inside. The Attendant's slim body began to act as a puppet.
Above the Attendant's functions, there was a higher authority in control.
~~~
After the two left Fazer Blast, Gregory led Freddy back to Roxy Raceway, in order to meet with Vanessa and make their next moves. Vanny had been defeated, so the only obstacle they had left was the entity named 'Glitchtrap.' He was behind all the death and destruction that came with the company's history.
The duo were currently standing by the area where they found the cart. They were awaiting Officer Vanessa to find them, but all that was around them was a cluster of construction items, the sound of ventilation, a hint of smoke, and an eerie feeling of loneliness in the house of a monster.
"Gregory, are you sure that she will meet us here? I know you saved Vanessa from her curse, but I do not believe she is quite READY to meet us here," Freddy asked inquisitively.
"Yeah! She TOLD me she would meet us here. She'll be here soon. I'm sure of it," Gregory replied persistently.
"Well... if you say so. It's currently hazardous for a human to be in this area. As I said earlier, a sinkhole appeared not too far from here. I don't think it's safe," Freddy reminded.
"The Sinkhole is where our answers lie," a dead, soft, feminine voice said.
Freddy and Gregory jolted their heads toward the origin of the voice. Its owner was standing at the base of the white, marble stairs leading to the Entrance Balcony of the Raceway. A tall woman with a white button-up shirt, a black vest, black jeans, a security cap, rosy skin, vibrant green eyes, and a blonde ponytail was looking at the pair.
"Officer Vanessa! Uh, I heard of your, uh... situation... are you okay?" Freddy asked timidly.
"For now, yes. But I'm trying to recover from everything that MONSTER did to me..." Vanessa replied with a tone of instability.
The room temperature seemed to fall ten degrees as Gregory shuddered at the thought of that strange entity that he had encountered. A strange chill ran through his entire nervous system as he recalled the tape's contents.
"Don't worry, Vanessa. He had control over us all. There wasn't anything you could do," Freddy said in a comforting tone.
"Right. Well, it's time to end this! There's a doorway at the far left corner of this room. It leads to the Sinkhole," Vanessa said, with a tone that sounded like she was trying to be passive. However, all three of them knew Vanessa was broken inside.
"Are you truly okay? PLEASE, don't lie!" Freddy begged.
Vanessa gave a soft smile, then immediately broke down in tears. Gregory frowned out of concern, and Freddy's expression fell. His ears slumped at the sides of his head, his eyelids began to narrow, and a visible frown formed through his jaw.
"Down below... such EVIL! He's coming back because of me. Those children that went missing... he killed them. And he used ME!" Vanessa sobbed.
Freddy's hands clenched into fists. A nasty scowl formed in the place of a pitiful frown. He began to remember the acts of evil committed by his father, and how Freddy was partly responsible himself.
"Don't worry. We're going to find that man and I'm going to terminate him for good. It's time we did," Freddy swore. Then, Vanessa's tears slowly ceased.
"We can't bring those children back... can we?" Vanessa retored in a dead tone.
"No, we cannot. I know how that feels. I've made sure that Gregory won't meet the same fate. And I'm going to do everything in my power to prevent another death," Freddy said.
"You're right... I don't think we should waste time. We need to go. Follow me," Vanessa instructed.
The security guard led the animatronic and boy through the floor of the Raceway, until they reached an empty corner with a green door on the wall. The wall around the door had cracks and holes forming from previous damage. Air blew from behind the cracks, which reeked of decay. There was something very OLD here.
"Behind this door..." Vanessa kneeled down to look at Gregory in the eyes. "You are going to see INCOMPREHENSIBLE horrors. It will have an impact on you. There's things down there even I can't explain," she warned. Gregory stared at the security guard, extremely frightened.
"Down there? This whole PLACE gives me the creeps. The Endoskeleton Warehouse was supposed to be dangerous!" Gregory exclaimed.
"There were much less Endoskeletons there than usual. You'll see why soon. Now... are you ready?" Vanessa asked.
The entire world seemed to focus its weight on Gregory in this very moment. There was a huge decision to be made. Freddy and Vanessa intensely gazed at him, awaiting a decision. Was Gregory going to stay behind like any normal child? Or was he going to continue, knowing full well he could be scarred for life? Gregory drew a breath of cold air.
"I'm ready."
