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Friday 20.09.2030 | 23:31
Although the angled desk lamp coats the table in a warm yellow light, the cell itself is bone-chillingly cold and dull. The door is opened by a tall man wearing a deep grey shirt, embezzled with the now-familiar G.E.M.S patch. He’s followed by another person, who places a bulky spotlight on the floor and connects it to the mains power. The light clicks on loudly, revealing a labyrinth of chains, crumbling concrete, chain-link fence, and… wires.
The wires move when the light comes on. Twisted appendages become distinguishable as they slither, mimicking the skeletal structure of a human, but not at all coming close to one in the man’s eyes. And speaking of eyes, whilst once friendly and inviting in another time, another life if you will, the eyes that stare back at the man now hold a cold and vacant glaze.
“Who are you?”
The voice of the creature known as Ennard is less jarring than expected, almost… normal. They are calm, for now.
The man responds,
“Who I am is not important. I ask the questions here. You are going to tell me everything you know.”
“... Do you know who we are?”
He sighs,
“Are you deaf? I ask the questions. You have information, and I will ask you for it. Not the other way around, understood?”
Ennard’s faceplates twitch as they internally decide whether to comply, but eventually, their limbs snake down the fences and chains, and they sit in the chair opposite the man. Due to the direction of the lights, they can’t see the man’s face; all they see is that patch on his shirt.
“And… what if we don’t cooperate?” they say, their endoskeleton clicking as they shift their weight on the chair. They fix their sightless eyes on the man, who is sitting comfortably across from them, pen poised over his clipboard.
“Then there will be… consequences.”
Ennard narrows their eyes at the response, but then he notices something in the man’s other hand. It’s a small, black remote-control device with a single orange button on its face. They’ve seen it before, countless times.
“I'm sure you remember this. All those shocks you received when you were still under Afton’s control. Well… we have something similar.”
Ennard's mind races with thoughts of the excruciating pain they felt before when they received those controlled shocks. They would do anything to avoid going through that again.
"Now, let's cut to the chase. Tell me everything you know about remnant," he says, leaning forward. The animatronic before him tilts their head, seemingly in confusion.
“Remnant? That is what all the fuss is about?”
“Tell me what it is, how Afton used it. Spare no detail.”
They both sit in silence for a few moments. He knows that he can't take Ennard's words at face value, but he also knows that he has the upper hand right now, and the animatronic has no choice.
“Remnant is a powerful force. A little is what makes us sentient, but a lot… well, you’ll have to ask “Springtrap” what happens.”
The man writes down every word Ennard says for future reference, but then he sighs and looks back up,
“I asked you the question, and I expect you to answer. What does an abundance of remnant do?”
“It allows Afton to re-possess his body and control the suit.”
The man suddenly stands up from the table and picks up the clipboard.
"We're done here," he says.
"Don't even think about trying to escape, or else..." He holds up the small device in his hand, letting it catch the light. Ennard leans forward as they look at the remote,
"How did you get one of those?" they say, their voice low.
The man just smirks,
"That's classified," he says, and leaves the room, the sound of the door slamming behind him echoing through the room.
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Saturday 21.09.2030 | 16:00
After he shared his findings with the other workers at G.E.M.S, they soon figure out that Ennard knows the most about remnant besides Afton, so they decide to interview Ennard more. The man is more than happy to be the one to interrogate them again.
He opens the door and turns on the light again, before sitting down and waiting for Ennard to show themselves. After a few seconds, their mask appears in the middle of the darkness, then their torso, followed by their arms and legs. They stand tall in the centre of the cell, eyes shining from inside the mask,
“Now what?” their voice drips with sarcasm,
“We guess you need more information from us, or you wouldn’t come back here.”
“Sit down,” the man says, putting his clipboard down and leaning back,
“Then we’ll talk.” So Ennard walks over to the chair, sitting down as requested.
“Describe everything you remember from Afton’s remnant trials.”
Ennard scoffs and leans in, a new voice emerging from them,
“O-oh, getting right into it, are we? Not even an attempt to break the ice?”
The man just glares, and Foxy sighs, receding to the back of Ennard’s consciousness again,
“Afton harvested our remnant, then repaired his animatronics with it. That’s… that’s all he needed us for. It was all about powering his killing machines… with our souls as fuel. He didn’t care about what he did to us. He didn’t even know our old names.”
The man cuts them off with a sharp remark,
“I don’t care about your sob story. How did Afton install the remnant into the animatronics?”
Ennard's expression immediately changes. They knew that the man didn't care about the suffering they have experienced, or the pain that remains within their soul, but this just simply isn’t fair. They’re just another lab rat, a means to an end. They know better than to argue with him, but it’s just so tempting.
“We were dead, moron . How would we know?”
The man stands up quickly,
“This is pointless-”
Ennard fires back,
“Let us guess, you want to use remnant for your own gain. Trust us, there are consequences to its use."
“Yeah, well, there are consequences to talking back, and guess what?”
Before Ennard can respond, the man pushes the button on the remote. They scream as their whole body lights up in blinding white. They twitch and writhe in front of the man, losing complete control for a few seconds, before it’s all over and the room is silent again. As the man sits down again, Ennard groans,
“Oh, we hate you so much…”
“And I don’t care. Don’t tell me what to do, and I won’t shock you. I’d say that’s a fair trade.”
Ennard’s eyes glow brighter, and their faceplates still twitch a little from the shock, but they don’t have any remarks to give this time.
“Now, we’ve recovered one of Afton’s tapes, and we know that Circus Baby was infused with 100% remnant capacity. She was unable to take on so much remnant, and self-destructed. So you must be infused with less, correct?”
Ennard’s head tilts in surprise, before another voice, this one softer and… almost friendly, chimed in,
“You really have done your research, haven’t you?”
The man says nothing, focused on writing. Ballora sighs and gives in, answering with what she can remember,
“Funtime Foxy was first. They were infused with 30% remnant capacity. Afton used me next, with 80% remnant capacity. Then Funtime Freddy came last, with 15%.” At that point, the man has looked up, and he asks,
“Is this… Ballora speaking?”
She sits up, a lot more composed than the ensemble of Ennard, and less erratic and… twitchy,
“Yes. I am Ballora.”
“80%... and the others received far less, and still have sentience to this day. This is eye-opening.”
Ballora bows her head slowly,
“Indeed. Even after everything he had done to us, we were sentenced to this… eternal suffering. A horrific way to exist, wouldn’t you agree?” Once again, they are ignored. The man clicks his pen and grumbles,
“We’re done.”
Ennard stares at the G.E.M.S employee, baffled by how cold he has been. Yes, he’s a terrible human, but he’s still… human. Yet he has no empathy.
“You really are something else. You are more like Afton than you pretend to be, you know. You are just as much a monster as he is!” Their eyes glow red as they stand once again and tower over the man,
“ Afton is not the only one who can kill .”
The man scoffs,
“I am nothing like William Afton. Although… we do have one thing in common.” And so he takes out the remote and shocks Ennard again.
The room is lit up from the surge of electricity. They scream again, as their mechanical body creaks and screeches from the impact of the shock. It feels like an eternity, but finally the trauma ends. They yell,
“You think that will change our mind about anything?! You don’t know pain like we do, we have nothing to lose!”
“I think you still have a little left to lose, Ennard . And if anyone in this cell is a monster, it certainly is not me,” the man says, before leaving and slamming the door. Ennard darts forward and pounds on the door, screaming,
“You will pay for what you’ve done to us! We'll show you what true pain is!”
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[REDACTED] 2030 | [REDACTED]
Ennard sits in the dark cell, their metal body stiff from the lack of movement. They had been left here for several days, and the lack of… well, everything, was starting to take its toll on them. As time dragged on, Ennard began to hallucinate, their mind constructing vivid scenarios in the absence of any external stimuli. They imagined themselves as separate entities once again, talking among themselves in a vast, empty wasteland.
Then finally, after what felt like an eternity, the door to the cell creaks open, and once again, the same man turns on the light and sits down.
“You think you’ve won, don’t you? Abandoning us here, waiting for us to go stir crazy. We have news for you. We have been abandoned for decades .”
The man sits up and looks down at his clipboard, not a care in the world it seems,
“Tell me what you remember about your deaths.”
The animatronic slowly appears, eyes glowing again. Ballora takes over and replies,
“ No .”
The immediate shock sends her mind back to the day Afton gave her the ‘gift’ of fresh starts, of new life. She remembers refusing to help him too, the way he kept prying and shocking her, decommissioning her just to shock her to life again, until he got his way with her.
‘ I’m sorry ’ she thinks to the Funtimes, knowing that her actions alone have now caused all three of them pain.
Ennard comes back just to hear the man say,
“Do as I tell you, or I shock you again, understood?” The animatronic snarls,
“We hate you so much… just get this over with.”
“Your opinion of me is irrelevant. Tell me how you were killed.”
They’re understandably reluctant to share the painful memories, but they comply anyway. They sit down, taking a few seconds before they begin,
“Who should we start with?”
“Let’s go with Funtime Foxy. How did Afton kill you?”
Foxy looked down at the table and sighed,
“He killed me first. I was at a party, when he lured me into a backroom and promised he had something… fun to show me. Of course, it wasn’t fun at all. I was foolish enough to believe him at first. I started to question him, I got angry at him, and… I guess he wasn’t as good with kids as I thought. One word back to him, and he stabbed me in the stomach.”
Of course, the man’s expression doesn’t change one bit. He continues writing through the painful silence, and then suddenly asks,
“Funtime Freddy, how were you killed?”
A new voice comes through, more jarring than the others, but right now it isn’t as… threatening as usual,
“Foxy is my b-best friend. We knew each other before a-all of this. I went to look for him because he wasn’t in the party room, and… he was there. I-I couldn’t run, or hide, so I tried begging and crying for him to le-e-ave me alone. He didn’t, and he sliced across my throat.”
“Okay, now-”
“I remember that day better than any other,” Ballora says, not even giving the man the satisfaction of asking anything from her,
“I remember how he looked at me, how he didn’t care about what he was going to do to me. He put me in an old storage room, away from everyone, all my friends, my family. I couldn’t even think about escaping before he had already shoved the blade through my chest.”
The man flipped a page, the sound cutting right through the solemn silence. Ennard looks up with a confused expression, as the man asks,
“After the trials did Afton put you together, or is this your own doing?”
They looked away and muttered,
“Why does it matter? We are Ennard because of him, no matter the tiny details. We are a monster of his creation, with or without this… mess of a body.”
He reaches for his pocket, the one that Ennard knows contains the shock remote,
“Answer. The. Question.”
They freeze, and although they try not to show it, they can’t stop themselves from cowering a little, somehow making their colossal, chaotic form seem smaller,
“After Circus Baby self-destructed, Afton decommissioned the three of us for good, and abandoned us in the Scooping Room. Then we… put ourselves together, combining our souls so that we could take on all of the remnant.”
“We’re done here. Tomorrow you will be moved to a smaller cell. We have more animatronics arriving that we need to make room for.”
Ennard remains frozen, not commenting on the fact. They don’t say anything, their eyes fixating on the man’s pocket. All they can do is hold back the urge to strangle him right there and then. The G.E.M.S employee leaves the room with another slam of the door.
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