Mike was no more trained in the art of escape than a frightened animal. He screamed, arched his back, threw his weight away from his captor. The skin on his wrist tore and bruised as he struggled to pry it free and the pain aggravated the fear of death until it was a flaming wound.

His body gave out before his mind did, somewhere between biting greasy metal fur, and getting shoved head first into a table as Chica dragged him past it.

He breathed heavily and tried to recollect his thoughts.

It was roughly... Shit, what time was it? Too early in the night to be saved by dawn. They were nearly to the maintenance room.

The eyes of the golden Freddy suit from that cursed room stared into him through the open door. It lay limp and empty, waiting for something to fill it.

Mike's heart swelled into his throat, with the last bit of effort he could muster, he ripped his arm free. Quite literally.

Blood hit the floor in thick, red drops. The animatronic seemed confused as the weight in her hand disappeared, and it lifted its arm up to examine the bits of flesh trapped between metallic plates.

Mike, personally, felt excruciating pain, and he wheezed and panted while taking off running back to the office.

Inside the tiny room, it was uncomfortably quiet, aside from the buzzing of the fan.

Mike nearly fell as his legs threatened to give out, but he stretched and hit both door buttons before completely collapsing.

For a few moments, the only sounds came from his lungs as he struggled to recover. Then Chica was bumping her head against the tiny window slowly, eyes staring blankly down at him. It was as if she was saying 'hey, no hard feelings, we can play this game just like old times, what do you say?'

Mike got to his feet, clutching his arm to his chest; common sense said to stop the bleeding, which was welling up at an alarming pace. However, he stood there stunned for several more moments then he needed, for, behind the slack-jawed chicken, there was a shadow moving down the hall.

Without taking his eyes off of the animatronic, his captor, his nightmare, Mike picked up the camera and checked the end of the hall.

A spring trap suit stood empty-eyed by the bathrooms.

It stood tall, ears bent, one missing. Mysterious stains, or perhaps just ones Mike didn't want to put names to, covered the yellow fur. It was a creature of bad dreams, and was it just him, or could he smell the rotting stench the monster carried with it.

The reaction of Chica finding the creature looming behind her was an impressive one. Like her brothers, the horrifying screech was deafening, and echoed around the building, through the speakers, and into what felt like Mike's very soul.

He clamped his hands over his ears and cowered, watching through the little window as the golden Bonnie grabbed Chica by the back of the neck, and pulled.

Metal wrenched and wires snapped, finally, the dreadful cries of the animatronic's voice box stopped, due to it hanging from the other creature's hand.

Mike stood there, stunned, watching as the robot parts hit the ground. Chica stood deathly still, her end standing out from the others, if only in violence.

Slowly, he sat down on the floor. The living animatronic stared at him, its teeth perched in an odd smile, yet between the gaps, if Mike squinted just so, an open, human, mouth hid just behind it.

His stomach rolled in horror. He had known the suspect had been killed by a suit. But seeing the dead man, walking, moving, silently screaming from behind this metal mask…

This was the man Mike had learned to survive from, the lonely creature, left in the dark, avoided, pushed aside, sacrificing himself to protect others from taking his place.

Punished for a crime he never committed, by the ones he felt guilt towards for not protecting.

Mike felt tears rolling down his cheeks. They had never even removed the body. Just walled it up in the secret room, lest the secret get out, leaving rumors to swirl. It wasn't an accident, it was murder. And someone, somewhere, had hidden the body of an innocent man.

"I'm sorry..." Mike whispered, "I'm so sorry..."

The man without a name, long since dead, stared blankly back. Maybe his consciousness wasn't there, maybe he couldn't hear the words, but Mike said them anyway.

Eventually, the power went out. There was no Freddy to attack anymore so only silence resulted from the black out.

Bonnie was there, but he stayed far away, hovering by the stage, his safe spot.

Mike stared at the phone guy, hovering in the doorway.

Around a quarter till six, the golden Bonnie, and the man inside, slowly walked into the room.

Mike's legs had long since gone numb, and he stared up in horror, but it, he, ignored him and slowly walked off, pausing only to grab the scruff of the golden Freddy suit and haul it into the exposed secret room.

Eventually, the clock struck six, and early dawn light stretched its fingers around the hall corner.

Anne walked in at exactly 7am, whistling.

"Hey, Mike! Are you- fucking kidding me."

The party room was trashed, tables had been pushed to the side, chairs were upended. Several drag marks of blood and goo marked something's passage through the building, and a pool of blood nearly made her heart stop.

Anne took off running and nearly ran into Chica. She yelped and quickly knocked on Mike's door. "Mike? Mike! Are you okay?! It looks like a tornado hit!"

There was a pause, then finally the door opened. Mike was laying on the floor, shirt stained with blood. Anne quickly ran in and grabbed his shoulder. "Mike speak to me, what happened?!"

He lifted his head up and smiled weakly, "I'm fine Anne, it looks worse then it is."

She noticed his wrist was badly mangled (were those, tendons?! Her inner voice shouted.), "you look awful."

Mike laughed and sat up. "Like I said, looks worse than it is."

Not one person that day saw a man look happier while getting fired.

Things were always malfunctioning at the pizzeria, but it was impossible to blame the destruction of an animatronic on a bug in the code, and needless to say, the boss was pissed.

He wrote the pink slip the very same day and thrust it into Mike's hand with an angry snap to "get out!".

Anne and Jordan watched Mike nearly dance out the door, still giving the animatronics a wide birth. When he got to his friend and the other night guard, he kissed Anne hard on the cheek and grabbed Jordan -who was a good six inches taller- in a headlock, before throwing open the door and trotting down the street.

Anne quickly grabbed her coat off the leg of a tipped over chair and started heading for the door.

"Where are you going?" Jordan called after her.

"I want to get some answers!" She said over her shoulder. "I'll be back in a second!"

Mike was well down the street when she caught up with him. The wind was bitter cold, but he didn't seem fazed.

"Hey hold up."

He slowed and turned to Anne as she approached, "Yeah? Need something?"

She matched pace with him and they walked to the corner and stopped. "What happened back there? With all the blood and the animatronics acting strange, just, everything. What happened?"

Mike took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

"I don't know."

Anne frowned, "You've got to know, why did Bonnie make that hole in the wall, what was that rabbit thing we saw in the kitchen, that old suit of Freddy's. You were there for all of it."

Mike looked thoughtful.

"Anne," He said, pointing past her. "Look at that building and tell me what you see."

She looked the way he was pointing. "I see the pizzeria." She said bluntly.

"I mean really look at it." He let his finger drop.

The pizzeria was old, built in the late seventies and showing its age in the style. The sign that hung above the door, with Freddy's face on it, was stained by years of bird poop, and with most of the neon burnt out, read 'Freddy Fazbear Pizzeria'- pronounced "ass please" by the more immature employees.

Anne shrugged dryly. "Yeah, it's old, so?"

Mike sighed. "I see a place that, despite being dead, is still there. I can't explain what goes on in there. People died, Anne. Good people, people that did nothing wrong, children... How can I explain that? How can I explain to you that I'm sure I saw a man's corpse walking around? You're asking me to explain why a robot bunny headbutt a hole in the wall? Why they stopped working after all these years? I can't answer that, and honestly? I don't want to. I want to do what should have happened long ago. I'm going to turn around this corner, and let it die. Let the souls inside move on. They can't do that with people like me forcing it to struggle on."

"Even if I could explain that place, what makes people do such awful things, to make places like that so evil, I wouldn't. I'm just going to go home now, grab a newspaper, and get a nice, normal job. Okay?"

Anne folded her arms, "Fine," She said, "But tell me one thing; what was with the tapes?"

"He was lonely, I just happened to find them, what else is there?"

She opened her mouth to protest, but Mike interrupted her by placing his hands on her shoulders, leaning in close.

"Anne?" He whispered, breath on her ear.

Anne turned beet red, "What?"

"Stop asking questions."