Inside Job (FNAF: SB Rewrite)

Chapter 18 - Encounter

I woke up out of breath and in a cold sweat. My eyes darted around the room, and I remembered where I was. Freddy's backroom.

I had a nightmare, I think. The memory of it had already begun to fade, but I remembered bits and pieces of it. I saw Michael cutting his stomach open, I trembled from endoskeletons towering over me, and I heard Roxy's sorrowful cries as she burned. I shook it off and hopped off the chair.

I walked over to Freddy's room and peaked in. "Freddy?" I whispered.

Freddy was standing by the arcade machine in the corner. He looked like he was playing the game on it. He looked over his shoulder and smiled.

"Gregory, look! I set up the game, do you want to try?" he said excitedly. His face dropped when he noticed the dark circles around my eyes. "You look tired," he commented.

I rubbed my eyes to try and wake myself up more. "I had a nightmare," I admitted. "Oh no, are you okay?" he asked.

"I'm fine, just tired," I said. I was going to have to get over this tiredness if I wanted to continue my investigation. "What's the game?" I asked, curious about the arcade game. I had seen it earlier and noticed it was untouched. This must be the first time Freddy's ever turned it on.

"You deliver cake to all the kids! Look!" Freddy said. I had to stand on my tippy toes to see the screen better. It was a pixelated version of Freddy, and he held a giant pink birthday cake. Around him were pixels that were meant to represent children, and after not giving them cake fast enough they'd begin to complain. This looked like a regular work day for Freddy. Why would he be so excited about it? "Why don't you try?" he said.

He moved over to let me take the controls. It was just a simple joystick to move the character around and a button to interact with things. The game itself was fairly easy, and I was about to quit when a car pulled up to the front of the restaurant. There was a kid crying outside, wanting to get in but couldn't for some reason. This was different than when Freddy played. I stopped trying to feed the kids and watched as a man walked out of the car and towards the child crying outside. "Freddy, what's this?" I asked.

He leaned in closer to the screen. "I don't know, I've never seen this before," he said. I tried to move Freddy's character out to the doorway, but it moved far too slow to make it. We could only watch helplessly as the man approached the child.

The kid turned gray, and the man went back to his car and drove off. I froze. It was pretty clear this was supposed to represent a child being murdered. The game cut to black, and eventually all that appeared on screen was a white face. It had black, hollow eyes with purple streaks running down its face. I tried clicking one of the buttons, but nothing happened.

"I think I broke it," I said. Freddy unplugged the machine, but the screen remained. Even after he put the plug back into the outlet, its face still shone. "How odd," Freddy said.

The face reminded me of something, but I couldn't quite pin it down. It looked like a mime, stuck forever smiling, its streams down its face resembling crying, similar to the kid crying in the game itself. Then I remembered; I found a plushie of this back on the first night. When I first encountered the endoskeletons, I found a present in the playroom, and inside was a soft toy that looked just like this.

"Do you recognize it anywhere?" I asked Freddy.

"It somewhat resembles an old animatronic from the 80's," he said.

"Really? Who?"

"The security puppet. But I don't know much about the old locations and attractions," he admitted.

Security puppet. Now that I thought about it, the S.T.A.F.F. bots sort of looked like the bootleg version of it. They had the same long, white face and both worked in security.