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fivenightsatfreddysfanfiction · 3 months

Text

Call Declined

“What the hell happened on stage?!”

Sydney’s eyebrows raised at her yell, confusion in his expression that made Vanessa groan and clap a hand over her face. Right, she’d forgotten in her frustration that Sydney tended to make himself scarce whenever the Glamrocks performed in the atrium. He wouldn’t have seen the disaster she’d witnessed when Freddy suffered a very visible and alarming system crash and wrecked the show.

So many compensation coupons were being passed out by the S.T.A.F.F. bots while the crowd dispersed and started leaving the building.

“Freddy went on the fritz for some reason and collapsed on stage about twenty minutes ago,” Vanessa began with a sigh, shaking her head at Sydney’s grimace. “Right? Monty dragged him backstage while Roxy and Chica tried to save some of the performance. Once everyone’s out of the Pizzaplex, he’ll be taken down to Parts and Service to switch him to reduced power. It’ll keep him contained in his room while diagnostics get run to figure out what happened.”

Sydney tilted his head, a squint of suspicion on his face as he glanced towards the ceiling, then back to her. “Remote?” he asked and Vanessa nodded, rubbing her forehead as she turned her attention to the screen he had been sitting at. There were still a few stragglers wandering the gift shops, but for the most part it seemed like the public was leaving and the Pizzaplex would be able to close the main entrance soon.

“Yeah, the network should be able to handle it,” she replied and pulled her manual out, flipping through the pages. “It’s weird, though. There’s nothing in here on what we should do when an animatronic breaks down like that other than the general practice of ‘make sure people are distracted’.”

“No witnesses,” Sydney murmured, his tone shaky, hands gripping his knees as he seemed to suddenly shrink in on himself. Vanessa looked at him in concern, reaching out to lay a hand on his shoulder that just made him twitch at the contact before calming.

“Look, let’s just go and make sure everyone’s out of the building so the bots can get started working on Freddy. Maybe we can still save the rest of the scheduled performances and appearances,” she told him with a wry grin, “Then we grab something to eat from the cafeteria and go to bed. We were scheduled to have the shift off since it was a performance night.” Sydney still seemed worried, his eyes scanning the screen in nervous flicks as he tracked each person walking out the main entrance. Vanessa sighed and shook her head again. “If you’re gonna be fidgety, you could always keep your hands busy by giving me another foot rub,” she suggested teasingly, laughing at the flat glare she got from him as a response. Good, that got his mind off things. “C’mon, let’s go shoo the customers out-”

She didn’t get to finish, distracted by a flicker in her vision that signaled a need to put her security mask on. From the way Sydney sat straighter in his chair, a new tension in his expression, it was clear he got the indicator too. Guess dinner was going to be postponed.

Vanessa plucked the weird bunny shaped mask from where it was hooked to her belt and held it to her face, letting the lining conform to her face and anchor itself to her skin with a bit of suction. The overlay of augmented reality built into the Pizzaplex came alight in her vision, along with the digital Helpi assistant displaying a textbox in front of her.

/Urgent orders. Missing child within boundaries of the Pizzaplex. Orders are to locate and apprehend. Further instructions upon completing this objective./

“There’s a kid still in here? This is like the twentieth kid that keeps trying to hide in here overnight, you’d think parents would get the idea to keep track of their own kids,” Vanessa complained. So another catch and call procedure; get the kid to Lost and Found, notify authorities over the phone, wash her hands of the issue and go to bed.

Should be easy enough.

“Right, fine, so we’ll be going to bed later than we expected,” she muttered, pulling off the mask and reattaching it to her belt. She looked over at her partner, brow furrowing a little as he remained masked longer than she did. “Sydney?” she called uncertainly and he finally pulled the rabbit faced mask off, dull gaze staring ahead with no sign of having heard her. Her heart sank a little. Oh. Did he anger the network again? At least this was just his usual disassociation -Why would he need to do that on a task they’ve done almost routinely?- and not the weird other kind she’d been around a couple times. Different vibe, it made her skin crawl. She reached out, cupping his cheek in her palm and gently turning his head to face her, directing him to look her in the eyes. “We’ll get this done fast, okay? No mistakes, no miscommunications,” Vanessa promised, “We get the kid, we make the report, and you come back to me. Got it?”

He didn’t respond to her, but then he never did when he was like this. She could only sigh and hope her words made it past whatever walls he’d put up as she pulled away and grabbed her flashlight. Time to find a wayward kid.

-----------------

11:40 PM

Vanessa pinched the bridge of her nose with her fingers, trying to think through the slowly growing headache at everything going on. She had gotten a glimpse of the kid, a boy, that she was supposed to catch and take to a safe location but the brat had slipped into shadows behind the stage curtains and then just about vanished. She’d relayed the info to Sydney, got no response as usual, and then decided to alert the Glamrocks in hopes they could switch to security mode and coordinate with them. It worked to a point; they were looking for the kid, but they were also acting weird about it.

And then she saw Freddy missing from his room.

“You’re supposed to be on lockdown!” she griped when she spotted the tall bear animatronic in the first aid station of the utility tunnels, “Diagnostics running should have kept you offline until we figured out what caused your system crash. How’d you reboot this early?! How did you even get out of your room?!”

“I do not know how I got here!” Freddy blurted out and Vanessa glared up at him tiredly. That sounded so fake and she did not have the patience for this.

“First you ruined the show with whatever glitch happened, now you’re not even sticking to your procedure for repairs,” she scolded him, ignoring how his ears drooped and he did this little head tilt that made him look like a pathetic puppy. It wasn’t getting to her this time! “Look, there’s some kid running around backstage and we’re, like, 15 minutes to closing. Sydney’s already searching the daycare and I alerted the rest of the band to help us track the kid until the security S.T.A.F.F. bots come online,” Vanessa explained with a controlled tone to keep from losing her temper. So much stress, if she broke out with pimples after this, she was finding this twerp’s parents and demanding the good facial cleansers as compensation. “You’re too much of a liability right now and I can’t risk you damaging yourself or anything else. Management would come down on us so hard. Just go back to your room, switch to standby, and let the diagnostics finish, okay? If the system clears you later and we still haven’t found the kid, I can sign off on letting you join us in looking for him. Are we clear?”

“Crystal!” Freddy replied brightly, ears wiggling. Vanessa just stared at him, unimpressed. He was picking up jargon from the customers again. Ugh.

“Right,” she muttered and rubbed her forehead again, “Just go. And please be careful about it. Don’t hit anything on the way.” She left him be, hoping he’d follow orders, and went back up the stairs. Freddy could take the utility tunnels back to his room and if he spotted anything on the way that could be the kid, he’d alert her or Sydney about it. Would save her the hassle of finishing the search in that direction. If he tried wandering anywhere else, he’d run out of power not long after and be stuck in place until one of the S.T.A.F.F. alerted her about it. Either way, not her current problem.

Issuing directions to the Glamrocks on where to go to start their searches was a matter of switching between various frequencies on her walkie-talkie, but any time she wasn’t giving orders she kept it set to Sydney’s channel. Even if he didn’t respond it was still comforting to have that line of communication open.

Rockstar Row was clear, so she made her way out to the atrium and looked around, dreading having to search such a large and open area. It was going to be a pain to look for a single kid out here with just her, Sydney, and the three functional Glamrocks. Once midnight rolled around, the security bots would kick in and things would be easier.

She started her walk around on the floor, glancing up towards the atrium elevators just in case the kid showed up there in some attempt to get in and run somewhere else. Until midnight security protocols went live, they were still open to be used by the public so she had to be wary of them. Roxy was prowling the upper level of the atrium and Monty was making his way to the guest service kiosk to use the spotlight on top of it. Good, they were all following protocol. Everything was within the guidance of the manual.

So far, so good.

----------------

‘I shouldn’t have thought that, that was such a jinx to myself!’ Vanessa allowed herself that one mental complaint as she struggled to get control back over her limbs. It took a couple hours but she’d found that kid as he was trying to get into the elevator in the East Arcade Prize Corner and grabbed him before he could go anywhere. The frustrating bit was how he seemed to panic himself into a faint over that and she then had to carry him back to Lost and Found. The manual didn’t say anything about what to do in this kind of situation, so she was winging it and planned to make a note about it in her report. If the kid drooled on her shirt during this, she was demanding proper compensation for it.

The kid’s little Fazwatch chimed in a few times, Freddy’s voice calling his name worriedly a few times before going silent. So not only did he not go back to his room but he managed to gain enough extra charge to keep going and was in cahoots with the kid? Oh, he was so gonna get it from management for this security breach.

She plunked the kid down on a pile of Fazbear merch, shirts and plushies and the like, so he’d at least be sleeping on something comfortable while she made her calls and reports at the desk. Her fingers clicking away at the keyboard, Vanessa brought up the guest database to see where he’d be listed, get his contact info and then phone his parents. Now that she thought about it, scrolling down the list of names, it seemed odd that this Gregory kid’s parents hadn’t called the Pizzaplex first.

Did any of the other parents call first? The question flickered in her thoughts and she winced at a sudden resurgence of her headache. Shaking it off, Vanessa went back to searching for Gregory in the guest list.

He wasn’t there.

That was… weird. Vanessa ran a simple search for any match to ‘Gregory’ but a few minutes later it came back as a ‘no record’ indicator. He wasn’t in the system. So, who was he? Where’d he come from? Her dull headache seemed to insist she stop thinking about it and just focus on her work. She rubbed her forehead and sighed; maybe he just snuck in away from his parents somehow. She’d just call the police, report a lost kid, and then let them deal with calling his parents. Not her problem once the call’s made.

“Sydney, I got the kid. I’ll make the call to the authorities, so could you go figure out where Freddy is and- wait, you don’t like being around him, right?” Vanessa called over her walkie-talkie, fingers tapping on the phone nearby so she’d have it in hand. “Could you send Monty to find Freddy and get him back to his room? And then grab us some Chica Chowders for dinner on your way back? We still have some time to wind down before we have to be in our rooms. Over.”

No reply. Vanessa looked at her walkie-talkie, trying not to feel off balance. There was so much going strange tonight. Freddy crashing, kid on the loose, kid not even in system, Sydney disassociating on the job for what was a normal routine for this situation, headaches coming more often now that she was noticing things… was something going on?

She mounted the device back to her shoulder strap and went ahead with making the phone call. There was a bit of audio delay but she finally got a response. “Hey, this is Vanessa, head of security for Freddy Fazbear’s Mega Pizzaplex. I’ve got a lost kid on grounds by the name of Gregory. He’s not in our system so we don’t have parent contact information,” she reported after initial greetings from the police officer on the other end, “Could you send some people down to pick him up? He’ll be in the usual spot.”

“We’ll take care of everything. Thank you for your service,” the responder told her in a bright tone and then the line went dead. Vanessa pulled the phone away from her ear, staring at it curiously. Huh, that was new.

Sounds of shuffling and whispers behind her caught her attention and she spun in her chair to pin a glare on the kid that had shoved his hands behind his back quickly. “I see you’re finally awake,” she said drily, folding her arms over her chest, “Thought you were so clever dodging S.T.A.F.F., huh, Gregory?” The kid stared at her in alarm and she flashed him a smug smile. “Yeah, I know your name. You’re in big trouble, breaking in without your parents or paying for entry and sneaking around restricted areas. I’ve already called the police to come get you, so you’re gonna just stay right here until they arrive.”

“You called the cops on me?!” Gregory exclaimed in shock and offense, like she did the worst thing ever. What did he expect? He broke the rules!

“Hey, you’re the one who was wasting my time with your shenanigans,” Vanessa shot back, getting to her feet and stretching her arms, “My partner’s gonna be waiting for me with dinner and you’re gonna have to answer to the cops about being a rule-breaker. Should have thought about-”

A strange thrumming sound in the air. A new wave of pressure on her head. Gregory winced, looking around in fresh panic, but Vanessa only put her hands to her ears, trying to stave off a sudden wave of queasiness. What was happening?!

Her vision flickered. The AR overlay? How? No mask. The thrumming continued, growing steadily louder. The pressure increased and now her limbs felt numb. She couldn’t feel them, couldn’t feel her fingers, palms, toes, legs. Like her world was shrinking and she couldn’t open her mouth to scream. What was happening to her?!

There was movement nearby. The kid? She couldn’t breathe! Fear built around her as she found herself trying to move and finding nothing was budging. Like her body wasn’t listening to her.

Louder and louder, the thrumming sounded, along with a strange pitched whistling that tickled her ears and cast new visual interference before her eyes. What was doing that? How was this possible? Through the window of the Lost and Found room, Vanessa could see a strange figure dancing down the staircase towards the security door. A woman, dressed in a rabbit costume of varying shades of gray, large red eyes luminous in the flickering light. Her movement seemed almost flirtatious as she stopped at the window to wave at her and Gregory, paw-like gloves moving fluidly with the gesture.

Who was that?! What were they doing here?!

The rabbit woman opened the door -How did she get authorization to do that?!- just as Gregory rushed out of the room, the clatter of the vent covers the only indicator of how he managed it. Vanessa tried again to move, putting everything she could towards getting control of one arm. Still nothing.

“Not yet, my dear,” the rabbit woman purred through a voice distortion filter, the wide smile of her headpiece making her words all the more mocking. Her gloved hand went to Vanessa’s cheek, cradling it almost tenderly. “Just a little longer and then you can have fun with us.” Her hand then went to the walkie-talkie stuck to Vanessa’s shoulder strap, one finger delicately pressing on the call button, “He’s escaped confinement. Over.”

She let go of the button and the device crackled with an almost immediate response. “Tracking. Over.” Sydney’s voice sounded so… cold. Empty of feeling. Vanessa wanted to shiver, to scream and demand what was going on, what was happening, what had been done to her, but her body wasn’t listening.

The rabbit woman tilted her head, waved again, then skipped on out of the room via the other door to the lobby. The thrumming gradually began to fade, the pressure lessening, and Vanessa’s legs gave out under her, leaving her to collapse on the floor and remain laying there for who knew how long.

And that brought her to her current struggle and frustration and fear. Her limbs still felt distant to her but at least she was able to move them again. So strange; like moving on a delay, she would tell herself to do something and it would take a second or two for her body to follow through. Like it was still having trouble recognizing itself as being her body.

She never should have thought those cursed words.

‘Okay, I’ll just call the cops again once I can get up. They can arrest the weird rabbit lady and take the kid with them. I gotta find Sydney and snap him outta whatever this is. None of this feels right!’

Vanessa put extra effort into reaching for her chair. If she could leverage herself onto it, that put her closer to the phone. Her legs wobbled as she hoisted herself up, fingers gripping the seat for dear life. Pins and needles, it felt like when her foot fell asleep once but all over her body. At least it seemed to be wearing off and more control was being gained back. She sat down heavily, panting from the effort, and grabbed the phone from its cradle, jabbing out the numbers listed for the police. Phone to ear, she waited, but all she got was dead air. Confused, she dialed again, double checking the numbers to be sure they were put in correctly. Still nothing.

Like the call wasn’t even leaving the building.

Vanessa stared at the phone in her hand, a faint horror settling in. Were the phone lines cut? Did the rabbit woman do this? When?

What the hell was going on?

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