Ricky is well acquainted with a specific brand of horror. The urgent kind. The kind that comes with moving through the world as an outcast who refuses to experience life from the safety of a closet. Things like rogue AI, real life Terminators brought on by an unregulated technological singularity? Those were the non-urgent kind. Those were the what-ifs, a subset of man made horrors he never expected to contend with in his lifetime.
Very few moments in his life have been scarier than this.
Alone inside of the pizzeria, he keeps his distance from the animatronics who seem more interested in him than he is in them. It makes sense why William would be training them on human behavior, but he cannot wrap his mind around the how. They're not attached to anything. Their estimated power consumption cannot run autonomously inside of each robot.
But is it as impossible as the concept of ghosts animating them?
"Hi," he says, stiltedly lifting a hand. The four of them exchange looks before turning back to him. "I… come in peace?"
Chica holds a hand over her face and it dawns on him, slowly, that she's facepalming.
"You can understand me. Like, actually."
Freddy's eyebrows swivel upward as if to say duh.
"Holy shit. Crap! I mean, holy crap."
It's unreal. There's no way.
Ricky toes a precarious line between wonderment and sheer fucking hatred, a need to both sit for a chat and take them apart as methodically and agonizingly as possible. A sledgehammer could work, but a screwdriver would be better, more personal.
Bonnie in particular, with the way his ears swivel like some excited dog grates on Ricky's nerves so hotly that he curls his fists to keep himself from doing something stupid. If they decide they don't like him, there's no way he will be able to take on all four of them. That rabbit though, with its functional jaws—
The idea that Jeremy's death might have been nothing but an accident, the consequence of improperly maintained spring locks, weighs heavy in his heart. That it could have been avoided. That it was nobody's fault.
His head got in there somehow, though. Jeremy was a well-behaved kid who knew better.
What if I told you, that if you time it right, if the passing is traumatic enough, that the soul lingers?
William's words hang in the back of his head, his tech degree refusing the logic. There's no such thing as ghosts or phantoms or the supernatural.
But—when all else fails to explain, what else is there?
Literally anything, he tells himself.
He inches towards them and this time neither backs away. He side-eyes Foxy whose endoskeleton is halfway exposed, demonstrating that there's nobody inside of the suit and that it isn't attached to any sort of track. It really is free-roaming, functioning off…something.
Freddy's ears wiggle and he extends his hand.
Ricky stares at it. AI, ghost, whatever, William is still calling the shot here. He's under no pretense that he's safe.
Tentatively, he extends his own hand. Before the two of them can shake, Chica flinches forward in a blur and Ricky staggers back, tripping over a foldable chair.
She hides a soundless giggle behind a hand while Bonnie rubs his head, Freddy fixing her with a glare before turning back to Ricky with a neutral expression.
Jesus Christ.
They really do act like kids.
"Aren't you a whole comedian," he says, gathering his wits and what remains of his pride. "Look, I have to go do some stuff in parts and service, so uh…I'm sure you guys can hold down the fort until he comes back?"
Truth is, he does not want to be in the same room as them. He doesn't want to look at Bonnie and face the half-formed thought that crawls out of the depths of his mind. It feels like William is employing the same methods of manipulation soothsayers and psychics exact on the grieving. By now, it's less about fear and more about the anger of wanting to believe him.
"Come get me if you need anything," he says, because that's what a babysitter would say. None of them follow as he makes a beeline towards the back of the building, his eyes fixed on the doors while ignoring the bathroom he got trapped in all those years ago.
Keep breathing. In through your nose, out through your mouth. Don't freak out.
In parts and service he shuts the door behind him, back pressed to it.
There has to be an emergency exit. He'll slip out undetected and make a break for it, dump the Chevy a town over and nab himself another, far more inconspicuous car. Job be damned. Friends be damned. If he wants to live to die another day, he has to leave.
He steers clear of the springlock suits and other robotic miscellanea scattered across the room, of the eerie childlike faceplates mounted over blank mannequin heads that stare unseeing on the workbench. Those make him pause, equal parts intrigued and perturbed by their level of detail.
One in particular draws him in. The metal is rusted around the edges, but the meticulous exactness is a caliber above all the rest. The equidistant eye sockets, the elevated seam of a nose, the dip of a mouth. Were it to have a layer of flesh, it would be indistinguishable from a young child.
This obsession with children. Ease of access due to the nature of the establishment. Grownups knock back a few and suddenly no one's paying attention to Little Billy who is probably vacuuming up ringworm from the ball pit. Kids are easy to spirit away no matter their level of intelligence. Easier to overtake than a drunk adult.
Ricky would have been an easy target.
God knows what William would have done if there hadn't been cops crawling all over the place that November. Though it was Henry who had offered him the safety of a grownup, despite Ricky being a teenager. Did he know? Did he help?
That night changes with every visit. Sinking into it only gets him the faintest sound of music muffled by thick concrete walls. Not from the memory, but the now.
Ricky drifts away from the workbench and listens, unwilling to acknowledge the bone-deep familiarity of those guitar tabs repeating over and over as the band warms up for the performance of a lifetime.
That song. Of all songs, why would that one be chosen to play over the pizzeria's speakers? For a moment he thinks Afton's planned this, that this is just another attempt to keep him under his thumb but… Afton doesn't know about it. No one knows about it. Only two people throughout Ricky's history know of his connection to it, and one of them is dead.
One of them is dead. Jeremy is dead and there is nothing to be done about that. William can't bring him back. No matter how hard Ricky wishes, William cannot bring him back.
He isn't here. Get your head out of your ass.
Feedback, then the singing starts. His heart feels like it has been stabbed through with a dull spoon.
—his thirteenth birthday, he's a teenager now, finally, and he's definitely not celebrating by jumping on the bed because Dad said he was taking him to Disneyland. They wanted to wait another couple of years to do so, at least until Jeremy was tall enough to ride all the attractions, but by then it would've been too expensive. "Why are we jumping on the bed?" Jeremy asked, holding his hands. "Because it's the best day ever!" he answered—
Ricky pulls open the door and stands in the dark hallway, letting the music bleed through to him.
—Mom was cleaning the house, the smell of chili wafting through the air, The Rolling Stones playing on the stereo. "The best day ever!" Jeremy squeaked around a giggle and Ricky managed to fall backwards onto the mattress, his little brother's tiny body slamming into his gut and the two of them laughed and laughed and—
Freddy is swaying on the stage, microphone held up. "I have to turn my head until my darkness goes." Chica moves along with him.
Bonnie though, he strums his guitar, only stopping to give Ricky a thumbs up.
It's prerecorded, obviously. There's no way to get a full ensemble performance with only a guitar and an animatronic bear without a voice box. There are no sitars or castanets or—
—"I see a red door and I want to paint it black," he sings along, wrapping an arm around Jeremy and strumming his back as if he were a guitar. He's laughing, nearly shouting, "that tickles!"—
His eyes burn.
He laughs. It's the kind of laugh that comes with the acceptance of drowning, when the inevitability of what's to come can no longer be held at bay. The air feels light. He feels like a kid again, perched on a vinyl booth and watching the band play as he plucks pepperoni off his pizza slice. There's math work to be done, a history paper, chores carefully laid out by his mother. If he folds the laundry, he'll get an extra two bucks on Friday.
"If I look hard enough into the setting sun," he sings under his breath, "my love will laugh with me until the morning comes."
A crash breaks his trance, the rain of glass so sudden he startles away from the stage and pivots in the direction of the sound. He half expects to see William at the entryway, time having slipped away in a blur of balmy autumn memories, but his stomach flips at the sight of three strangers crawling in through the fresh hole in the doors. The music keeps going.
One of the strangers staggers to a stop, just as confused to see someone already inside the building. "Hey," he says, voice gruff and booming, "we was told this place was abandoned!"
The other two goons flank him. "Sure don't look it," one of them says, getting a nasty look from the other two for stating the obvious, before they all turn their attention to Ricky.
Well. Fuck. "Gentlemen," he says, aiming for casualness and missing the target, "can I help you with something?"
"Yeah. There ain't supposed to be a security guard on the premises at this hour."
"Change of plans?"
Big Guy, who is clearly the one in charge, lumbers towards Ricky before coming to a dead stop, head swiveling from side to side to give him a long, lingering onceover that makes his skin crawl. He knows he's been clocked by the way Big Guy's mouth curls into a sickening grin he would love to wipe off were he in a better position.
"Now whatta we got here, eh? A feisty little thing." The others loom over his shoulders to get a better look.
Ricky takes a step back. "Fuck off. You're trespassing on private property, so unless you want the cops on your ass I suggest you get out."
"Aw, think you're tough, huh? I bet you bite, too. Just enough to tickle."
"Come on, man," says one of the goons, smacking Big Guy's bicep. "The job's the trash the place, not get on any lists."
"No one's gonna know if the two of you keep your fucking traps shut."
Quick assessment. Ricky could take one, but three is out of the question. He glances at the animatronics who all seem stuck in a loop, playing the same song as if nothing at all is happening around them. Maybe he was right after all. Maybe it is just AI and this is something they are not programmed to understand, let alone react to.
At least he has one thing in his favor, or at least he hopes he does: he knows Freddy's and the goons don't.
"Alright, okay," he says, holding up his hands and taking a step towards them. "You got me. This is kind of awkward but I didn't expect anyone else to be hitting this place up so early in the day. Maybe we can talk shop, split the spoils. These coin machines look about ready to pop. Get what I'm sayin'?" Ricky gives an uneasy chuckle that is sort of reciprocated until it's not.
"Orders are orders," says Big Guy, and Ricky nods his head in understanding.
"Coolio."
He books it down the hallway without looking back.
It takes a moment for them to begin their pursuit, likely debating their priorities and how to cut their losses now that they've been seen.
Ricky doesn't want to consider the odds at play here. William could have. Ricky isn't exactly in his preferred killing range, but to think he would have taken a slightly more personal approach with how their relationship, whatever that entitles, has progressed in recent days. They're practically pals with the occasional benefit.
His shoes skid when taking a sharp turn without slowing down, darting past parts and service and a supply closet. He hits the brakes when he catches it out of the corner of his eye, an open door leading to a room with a phone. Ricky throws himself inside and slams the door shut, barricading it with a chair.
Without wasting time inspecting the space, he picks the phone off the receiver only to hear nothing when holding it up to his ear. No dial tone, nada. "Fuck!" He slams it back down then holds it up again, pressing 0 in hopes it connects to an operator despite it looking like a private landline. Nothing.
Someone rattles the door and he presses his back to the brick wall, holding his breath as if they don't already know he's in there.
One of the CCTV monitors flickers, and one by one they come to life in the cramped office. The intercom crackles overhead, a different tune accompanying the looping Rolling Stones track, but it's too distorted and riddled with white noise to properly identify.
If he focuses beyond the rapid heartbeat in his ears he can almost make out what sounds like laughter.
Outside, the hallway goes quiet, but the sigh of relief never comes when a much more gruesome sound cuts through the static.
Ricky is no stranger to grown men screaming, but the terror in this one, the wet struggling for breath before a loud thud silences it altogether? That is new.
Movement out of the corner of his eye. He glances at the monitors, the gray screens switching through security cameras across the pizzeria. The stick on the control panel isn't moving, the buttons aren't being pressed, but the cameras continues to cycle through, keeping track of the goons' movements.
Big Guy is trashing the pinball machines with a baseball bat, occasionally stopping to kick over empty trash cans. He's in the arcade, but the scope of the camera is limited.
Ricky straddles the rolling chair and holds his face close to the screen because—there. In the corner, just out of sight. There's someone standing there. Some thing. He holds his breath because he recognizes the sight, the same haunting silhouette that stalks his nightmares, that always lingers like a shadow in the corner of the bathroom.
Only, here, Bonnie steps out into the light, in clear view of the security camera.
It takes a long time for Big Guy to realize he's not alone, and when he finally does he whips around, putting his whole body into the momentum of the swing. Bonnie stops the bat with an arm, grabs it with his opposing hand and snaps it like a toothpick.
There's no audio, and Ricky's grateful for that.
It all happens so quickly he wonders if he's slipped back into dreaming, if this is all another hallucination, if he's even there in the office at all.
A blue hand lashes out and slots itself around Big Guy's neck. He goes up until his feet are left to flail off the ground, nails scrambling over the rabbit suit. He tries to kick out but before anything can land, he's thrown like a ragdoll towards the destroyed pinball machines. He lays there, hands patting his chest and Ricky can see, only barely, the piece of jagged glass that's perforated through his abdomen.
Bonnie steps closer and the man on the ground tries to crawl away, his mouth moving frantically, bloody hands held up to plead, but it's no use. Ricky doesn't look away, can't look away, when a mechanical foot rises over Big Guy's chest. He tries to hold it off, push it away, but there is no fighting against that much metal.
The foot lowers, the man kicking and spasming until eventually, finally, he stops moving. Swollen eyes blank and arms now limp by his sides, the foot continues to press down until bubbles of viscera pop out of his orifices like sodden confetti.
Ricky swallows big, uneven breaths when hyperventilation edges close.
He needs to get out. Now.
Rushing out of the chair he trips over one of its legs and freezes, head snapping back towards the monitor, at the carnage spilled over the arcade floor. Bonnie isn't standing there anymore. In his place is a little boy, no older than seven, and he's looking right into the camera.
He looks upset, his paper rabbit ears stained dark.
"Oh my God." Whether it's a hiccup or a frantic sob, Ricky cannot decide. "Jeremy?"
What if I told you I could bring your brother back?
Was he never dead to begin with? Was he simply taken and is now here, and that night was just some fucked up cover-up?
I love them as if they were my own.
That sick fucking bastard.
Ricky kicks his way out of the security office and throws himself into the labyrinthine back hallways of the pizzeria. "Jeremy!" No point in holding bargaining chips if Afton owned the table all along. "Jer—Christ, answer me!"
Blood rushing, heart pumping, the thumping of his shoes over concrete, it all obscures every other sound in that godforsaken place. It doesn't matter now. Doesn't matter that he has no escape route, that he never found the emergency exit. He's going to grab his brother and they're going to run out those front doors even if he has to bite and tear his way through.
He runs headfirst into a body, knocking him down.
"Hey! Watch where you're fucking going," says the last of the goons, and he had forgotten all about him. He towers over Ricky, the look on his face betraying his lack of knowledge regarding his buddies' fates. "Ooh, boss says it's finders keepers. Thems the rules."
"Fuck you," Ricky snarls, kicking his shin before rolling back up onto his feet. "Get outta my way."
"Man. You really are a feisty one," he says, mock rubbing his leg. "The harder they fight, the better the payoff."
He grabs Ricky's arm and gets an elbow to the nose. The guy's not much of a fighter and he's smaller than the other two, which makes Ricky's chances of making it out alive slightly more favorable. He doesn't go down without a fight, though.
A wrong turn finds Ricky in the kitchen, the goon popping in to keep him company. It's not the worst of places, but his long legs give him an advantage whenever Ricky tries to swing around towards the door again. Not that it fucking matters at all.
Chica stands at the doorway, holding up her cupcake.
The goon follows Ricky's stare and jumps, fumbling onto the counter from the fright, before nervously laughing at the predicament. "Who thought running a kid's joint with those things was a good idea?"
Ricky puts as much distance as physically possible between Chica and himself.
"Whatever," the goon spits. "That thing can watch for all I care."
Chica continues to stand there but she's not watching the goon, she watches Ricky. He thinks about asking for help now that he's seen what they can do, but decides against it for reasons that have everything to do with not wanting to place his faith in something that could easily crush him without remorse.
"We usually try to keep it PG around these parts," Ricky says, pressing up against a defunct oven when the goon walks across the prep counters, kicking away pots and pans that clatter loudly onto the floor.
When he takes a boasting moment to leer down on him, Ricky is quick to reach behind himself, grabbing the knife magnetized to the wall-mounted block. It's rusted, its plastic handle chipping under his fingers.
The goon laughs, opening his mouth to offer what Ricky takes is going to be a witty remark, but his patience has been running on fumes since before this whole debacle started.
He's run out of patience and fucks to give, and even though it's been a while, it's just like riding a bike.
Ricky lunges forward and sinks the knife into the goon's foot.
The man screams, falls back, screams louder as his hands try to reach for the knife. Ricky does him the favor of pulling it out, unbothered by the way it catches on the fabric of his sneaker, that cool balm that comes from springing into action falling over him like a handknit shawl.
Brain off. Domino effect. Two have fallen, the third one is shifting, time to see the sequence to the end.
"What the fuck! You said to keep it PG!"
Ricky laughs despite himself, adrenaline taking a backseat. "Comical levels of violence tend to fall into that category," he says, crawling onto the counter to join the goon. "We can always commit to the family friendly cut afterwards."
The man flails across the surface, unable to stand up or get down, so Ricky holds him in place by grabbing the wounded foot and digging a thumb into the hole with savage pleasure.
"You're fucking crazy!"
He glances over his shoulder, at a Chica who is still at the door, her head canted to the side.
"I've been called worse," he says, wiping the knife clean on the goon's jeans. "Now, shut your mouth before I do it for you."
The goon does as he's told. Unfortunately for him, Ricky's been set into motion, and there's no stopping the gears once the wind-up key has done its job.
• 
