Vanessa's Antivirus

Chapter 2

"FREDDY FAZBEAR'S MEGA PIZZAPLEX IS NOW CLOSED. INITIATING NIGHTTIME PROTOCOLS."

It was midnight once again at the Mega Pizza Plex. Freddy was in his green room, hanging up cute drawings he had received from the guests that he had seen during the day. Gregory was currently having fun with Sundrop, since he had been officially unbanned from the day-care.

After putting up the last scratchy crayon picture of himself, Freddy laid down on the red sofa, preparing to enter rest mode for the night. His peace was suddenly interrupted by the metallic sound of the green room door opening.

"Hey bear. Just checking that you are in your room", said the new security guard, who immediately went back to looking at his phone after half-heartedly verifying that Freddy was in his rightful place. Once the guard left, Freddy shook his head in disapproval, knowing that this one too would be fired within a week. After thinking for a moment, he connected to the main network to run a quick check through the security staff rota for the next month.

Vanessa's name was still not there.

He had been checking the rota consistently over the past four months. In fact, they had all been checking the staff lists, ever since the day Vanessa had been carted away in an ambulance, after getting caught in the fire. Freddy had hoped that there would be a memo explaining her whereabouts or maybe even a letter of dismissal or notice of employee exit, but they had not found anything like that. She just disappeared without a trace. If she survived or not, nobody knew.

"Freddy?" called a voice from another room. Roxy had been in the middle of her night-time beauty routine when her new eyes looked through the walls and noticed her fellow animatronic staring into space. "You have been stood in place doing nothing for the past ten minutes. What's the matter?"

"Oh, hello Roxy", said Freddy as he awkwardly waved at the wall, knowing Roxy could see him. "I was just checking something on the main network and got a bit distracted."

"Her name still isn't on there, is it?" asked Roxy sadly.

Freddy's ears drooped. "Unfortunately, that is correct."

Hearing his response, Roxy's ears drooped too. Vanessa's unexplained absence had all of them worried. So worried, that they had begun to imagine the worst.

"Freddy, I know she did terrible things, but we all know that it wasn't really her that did them. She was being controlled by that thing that was hiding under the raceway."

"Yes, in some way, she was also a victim", agreed Freddy. Having grown tired of talking to the wall, he walked over to Roxy's room to talk with her face to face.

"Freddy, do you... do you think she... died?", said Roxy, as her voice gradually quieted down to a whisper.

Freddy, now in Roxy's room, felt his endoskeleton stiffen at the terrible thought. Death was a completely normal human thing, but being an animatronic who could not even feel pain, the idea was absolutely frightening. They had all considered the possibility, but no one wanted that to be the case. Not even Gregory.

"Let us not think like that", urged Freddy, resting his large paws on Roxy's shoulders, "I am sure there is a logical explanation for her absence."

As encouraging as Freddy was being, Roxanne's ears only fell further in dread. "Well, I am just hoping that, wherever she is, she's finding some sort of peace."

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Vanessa did not really know how much time had passed since she left the hospital. The days seemed to be blurring together and, despite her own wishes, she was still out of work.