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“Please, please! Molten! Molten! Help me! Please help me! I’m dying! Molten!”
The voice echoed through the storage room as what appeared to be Davis crawled out of the basement area, covered in blood with his head lowered in what appeared to be weakness. He barely gets over the crates blocking the area.
Molten immediately stops in his tracks, staring at him as his electrical currents start to pick up. He remembers those words. That tone. That scream.
Gregory, seeing this, tries to run over to Davis, pure worry clouding his mind, “Davis! Are you okay?! What happened?!”
Gregory shouldn't be here. It's barely been a few days since the incident in the basement. He was just leaving when the employee stopped him. He didn't know why. Probably to jumpstart some semblance of emotion in him. This thing shouldn't have been able to get out, let alone…
Putting his hand out to stop Gregory, Molten doesn’t allow him to get any closer to Davis with a firm tone, “Stay. BACK.”
Davis’ pained voice echoes through the room once more, “Gregory? Gregory! I-I think I tore something.”
Confused and frustrated, Gregory looks up at Molten for a split second before looking back at Davis, “Molten! What are you doing?! He needs help!”
Quieter than it normally is, the bear’s voice comes out as a mutter, “No, he doesn’t.”
“YOU left him down there! He’s hurt!”
“He isn’t.”
“This is what I’m talking about! Okay, you know what? Fuck this.”
Gregory attempts to go around Molten and push him away, but Molten simply moves with him. “I said stay back, Gregory.”
“You’re going too far! Let me help him!”
Gregory manages to slip under Molten’s arm, rushing over to Davis. Before he can touch the manager’s shoulder, Davis lifts his head and reveals glassy eyes. Compared to when last seeing him, his eyes have no color in them—no life. They don’t look human either. With his eyelids slightly sagged, the eyes almost seem to no longer fit in the sockets and simply come from the surface of his skull.
Taking a hesitant step back, a stutter makes its way out of the employee's mouth before being dragged back, “W…What—”
Practically shoving Gregory behind him, Molten tenses up and briefly looks back at him, “GOD DAMN IT, GREGORY! When I tell you to stay back, YOU STAY BACK!”
Crawling out from behind the crates, Davis stands up, his arms twisting back to normal from an unnatural angle. His lowered head lifts up with his dark hair falling away from his features, his face a tad sunken. Now in the light, his skin appears unhealthily pale yellow and white. Before long, he stands, as though nothing is out of the ordinary. The only details giving anything away being the unnatural state of his eyes and blood-soaked shirt surrounding his abdomen.
Almost trembling in place, barely noticeable, Molten doesn’t take his eyes off of him as his voice shakes, “Y… You.”
Remembering himself, he becomes angry, yelling, “HOW THE FUCK ARE YOU HERE?! WHY… WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DO?!”
Davis’ mouth contorts into an unnatural smile, gazing towards Molten as his voice comes out with a few crackles, “Molten… I didn’t think I could trick you, unfortunately. That's what made you useful. You don’t mind if I used what you left, do you?”
Molten’s fists clench at his sides, rage filling him the longer he spoke. As Davis’ hand reaches up to his abdomen, he sounds unbothered as he speaks, “After all… I was just a shitty manager, hm?”
Pouncing forward towards him, the robotic bear demands loudly, “STOP USING HIS FUCKING VOICE!”
Sidestepping out of Molten’s range, Davis immediately turns around and roughly grabs Molten’s metal head, slamming it into the tower of crates.
“Ah ah ah. You should have learned down there. Although, I can't have you damaging my skin so soon or following me. Hm…Where was it again? Ah, yes. Davis figured that out for me…”
Paying no mind to the wires in the way or the struggles of the robotic amalgamation attempting to wretch himself out of his grip, Davis forces his hand through a gap near Molten’s shoulder. Before the bear can react, Davis presses his shut down button.
Now with Molten out of commission and dropping heavily onto the floor, Davis straightens his back and turns back toward Gregory. “Hello Gregory.”
Eyes quickly glancing between Molten’s deactivated body and Davis, Gregory begins to back away slowly, “W… What… Davis… You…”
A look of realization crosses his face, clicking it together, “You aren't Davis… are you… that's… that's why Molten…”
Making his way closer to Gregory, Davis stops a few feet in front of him before lifting his bloody hand and gazing at it for a moment. Redirecting his line of sight back to Gregory, the constant smile on his face gets wider for a moment as he seems almost proud, “No, but I can be. I can be anyone.”
It takes only a second for his voice to morph into one sounding like Gregory’s own, “I can even be you. No one would be able to tell–Davis couldn't.”
Frozen in place at the sudden shock while trying to process everything he is seeing from what he knows, he replies hesitantly, “The… the phone call. Davis said I was kidnapped. Spoke… spoke to me on the phone, apparently.”
His eyes being drawn back to Molten’s incapacitated body, there is a moment of guilt in his tone, “He thought Molten did that–heck, I believed him–, but it was… it was you.”
Shaking his head violently, he begins to realize the predicament he is in. His voice comes out shakily with his eyes locked onto the foreign entity in a familiar skin, “What… What are you? Where'd you… How long did…”
Tilting Davis’ head to the side, there is a moment before their voice comes out in a mix of familiar voices, “A complex answer to such a simple question. I am his magnum opus, his greatest creation, a revolutionary invention. I am many things. Not that you would understand.”
Tapping his finger on his chin for a moment, it looks alive but stiff–off just enough to be noticeable. “You are likely looking for a name… a label…” An idea comes to them as his finger stills, his head tilting to the other side, “Hm. Let’s use what’s already known. Easy to remember. I’m what they call… The Mimic.”