Misplaced Trust

Chapter Eleven: Broken Repairs

Gregory lifted his head with a quiet groan. Red light seeped through their surroundings from a red bulb on a concrete pillar some distance away. The rancid smell of food and garbage assaulted him. He pulled himself to his feet, wincing at newly acquired bruises and probably a broken bone or something.

Gregory brushed off his hoodie, snatched his hat, and turned on his flashlight. Laying before him, broken and mangled, was Chica. Her beak lay a few feet away. The shell on her neck split open as well as the cracks and large hole in her chest. Her left arm had hardly any casing on it at all. Gregory barely needed to move to see her voice box.

Gregory pulled his hand back. Chica never insulted him and didn't threaten him in any way. Freddy seemed to like her, though he also seemed to like everyone. He grabbed and gently pulled out her once crooked voice box. The boy grabbed her beak for good measure. She would probably want that back to talk, after all. Did they even need their mouths to talk?

Whatever; he was holding it right now and that's what mattered.

Gregory huffed and checked on her. Some signals of "life" still crackled within her. He stepped back and raised his watch. "Hey, Freddy?"

"Hello, Gregory! Has something happened?"

"Yeah. Um, Chica got hurt. I need to take her back to get her fixed."

"Chica? Oh no! What happened?"

"She, uh, fell. In the garbage compactor." Technically not a lie, right?

"I will be there promptly. Do not move."

Freddy gasped and ran up to Chica as soon as he saw her. When she didn't immediately respond, he started to panic before stopping himself. Gregory reflected on how easy it would have been to just leave her and not say a thing to Freddy. It would have been way easier to take her voice box and leave her. But he doubted Freddy would have liked that, much less whatever lie Gregory would have told him. Ironically, it probably would have been "there was an accident" or "she fell" or something.

Freddy carried her back to Parts and Service and carefully pulled her into the protective cylinder. She croaked and the light returned to her eyes as she moved her head. A weird static-y noise came out rather than words.

"It is me, Freddy," Freddy replied. "You will be okay."

Chica coughed out static and her head twitched violently.

The computer made her fall still. Freddy backed out.

Gregory approached the computer terminal. "Welcome to Parts and Service. Please select your desired procedure," declared the bot. A list of upgrades showed, but Gregory wasn't quite sure he wanted to upgrade Chica as much as just fix her. Gregory tried pressing the down arrow and it flipped to the next screen. The computer announced, "Preparing for the repair procedure." A pause. "You may now enter the protective cylinder."

Chica lay still and silent. She needed her neck repaired. He brought in another chest plate, but most of her shell was dented or broken in some way. There was a good amount of damage to her neck and her beak was still incredibly messy. Wouldn't all that food and garbage be bad for her system or something? He wiped it off on a cloth by the box of spare parts before taking it in.

Computer bot stated, "It seems that Chica is under the weather. We can fix that later. For right now, we can focus on her throat. To access the voice box, we must open Chica's chest cavity. Please open Chica's chest cavity."

Gregory hooked his fingers under her side and pulled. He had to stop and unlatch a few things, but the second time he got it open.

"Well done. It seems that her voice box has been disconnected. Please insert the voice box and connect the throat wires to the voice box."