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Hiding a bulging secret folder is much harder than spy films would have you believe. When the three remaining night guards regroup in the parking lot, Mike still hasn't figured out how to conceal it. James Bond movies have lied to him. Finally, he shoves it under his arm and prays it blends into his jacket. Time to face the music.

Fritz doesn't so much walk outside as he does stalk out in a haze of a taught muscle and coiled fury. Rage sits thick in his eyes, the tilt of his head, the line of his back. His footsteps are silent. His hair bristles like needles. Shiny black plastic catches the glow from the streetlights and throws it back in their faces. He's ready to kill someone. In contrast, Jeremy looks... fine. Quiet. But all his movements are mechanical.

Not all there, are you? Mike thinks. And then immediately feels like an idiot, because wow, he has no right to talk. He lost track of his body for a while there. At least Jeremy's still on his feet.

The streetlights hit Jeremy's face. His eyes, red and swollen, break the illusion to pieces. Somehow, he still manages a smile as they approach.

“Hey,” Jeremy rasps. “Hope you weren't waiting long.”

“Nah,” Mike lies. “Just needed some air.”

He's constantly, painfully aware of the folder, but Jeremy's eyes glide right past it. More surprisingly, so do Fritz's. It's dark in the parking lot, but not that dark. The walk back to Jeremy's car is uncomfortably quiet.

“So,” Mike says.

“So,” Fritz echoes.

“How was he?”

“It wasn't him anymore.” Hell glimmers in Fritz's dark eyes, but his tone stays flat and level. It must be a gift. The tiny abstract part of Mike which is still looking down at the scene from above wishes more people had it.

“Oh,” says the rest of him in a quiet little voice.

“Yeah. Oh.”

Jeremy wakes up a little when they reach the car. He's alert enough to ask if either of them need a ride back. Mike shakes his head on automatic. Fritz shoots him a tense, unreadable look, then knocks on the car door.

“Shotgun.”

“If there's only two of us, you automatically get shotgun, that's how it works,” Jeremy grumbles. It's the liveliest he's sounded since... Scott.

Fritz huffs in response. Sickly rage keeps rolling off him like fog off the sea, but the angle of his shoulders settles, the lines of his face ever so slightly smoother. This anchors Jeremy, who only fumbles his keys a few times before he gets the car open. Fritz slides inside legs first and immediately pools himself in the passenger seat, already more relaxed than he was a minute ago.

The engine turns over a few times before it starts. They look happy, or at least happier.

Mike turns away and starts the long walk home. It'd be shorter if he waited at the bus stop, but public transit is untrustworthy at the best of times. Early morning is not the best of times. The sky is still pitch black. His shift probably isn't even over.

He laughs. God, what has happened to his priorities?

“Freddy's,” he murmurs. “Freddy's happened.”

The words come out smooth, easy, with only the barest ache in his vocal chords. Last he checked, the bruises were still bright on his skin. Thinking about them makes his free hand twitch toward his neck. All of a sudden, he wants to touch them, wants to dig his fingers in until they bleed.

It's not that he wants to hurt himself. He just wants to keep the marks. They're proof of... something. Everything.

Proof that all of this hasn't just been the mistake of a tired, ugly mind.

Mike tucks the folder closer and walks faster. He's got at least forty minutes of walking ahead, and then a good three to four hours to kill before he goes back to Aunt Sharon's place. At any other job, he'd worry about them calling her to complain, but somehow he doubts Freddy's wants that kind of attention. If he pretends nothing happened, he'll probably get away with it.

She's still going to scold him again, but she was going to do that anyway. He fucked up. He'll listen. That's how it works. Right now, though, he's out on the town with streetlights in his eyes and nothing but traffic in his ears.

It's... nice. It really is. Statistics be damned, sometimes he wonders if it would be so bad to just stay out here forever. Pick a street and stay there. Become one with the stray cats and the rubbish.

Yeah, it probably would be that bad, but still. It's nice to think about.

He decides to take the long way back. Aunt Sharon doesn't have many friends, but she has ways of gathering information, and Google streetview is unfortunately a thing. Being caught out while he's supposed to be at work won't go well for him. But hey, if he's lucky, maybe someone will stab him on camera. Give him the ultimate excuse to never go home.

Wow. His thoughts have gotten really morbid of late. He should probably be concerned about that, but all that's coming up on his radar is a vague sense of relief. Maybe he's just coming to terms with what he wants out of life. Or rather, what he doesn't.

The sun is rising, Mike's ass is numb from sitting on a cold playground swing, and there is definitely something up with the folder. Nobody's tried to swipe it from him. Nobody's so much as looked at it all night. It feels like regular paper, thick and straining to close around its contents, and yet...

Cindy's confused face and bloody fingers flash through his mind. He looks down at the folder, a lump in his throat. Is this like that, then? Something that other people can't see? But the other night guards didn't seem to register its existence either.

Is it just him?

Is he really...

Am I going crazy?

His legs are stiff. Standing up takes him longer than it should. The pins and needles hit as soon as his feet are under him. He grabs the swingset's nearest pole and waits until the pain is under control. Then he tries to brush any stray dirt or leaves off his pant legs.

No good. He's still a mess. What did he expect?

One final swipe at a stubborn dark patch on his knee. He stands up straight, tucks the folder back under his arm, and starts walking again. He should probably leave it out here, but he doesn't trust whatever is hiding it from the eye to protect it from the elements. Besides, some little rotten corner of his heart is imagining Aunt Sharon opening it up and beginning to scream, and the image makes him grin. The smile lasts all the way to the front door, where it shrivels up and dies. Aunt Sharon is waiting for him.

“You're late.”

Mike lowers his head. “I'm sorry.”

“Is this how you honour my sister's memory? Staying out all night, coming back covered in sweat and beer stains?”

“I'm sorry.” He doesn't want to look at her. If he keeps his eyes down, he won't have to face the sickly pallor of her skin, the circles bruises under her eyes, the tightness of her jaw.

She's afraid. Of him? No. Never. That only leaves 'for him'. He doesn't know how to deal with that.

“Get inside, boy,” she orders, glaring suspiciously over his shoulder. “Or I'll lock you out.”

“Yes, Aunt Sharon.” He makes himself as small as possible and follows her into the house.

It's cold comfort, but she doesn't seem to notice the folder, either.

This is how the next hour goes:

“You're an ungrateful brat.”

“Yes, Aunt Sharon.”

“You've never thought about anyone but yourself, have you?”

“No, Aunt Sharon.”

“What are those marks from? Are you hurting yourself? You think you can make it as a working adult if you're picking yourself apart?”

“I'm sorry, Aunt Sharon.”

He's stupid. He's useless. He can't make it on his own. Mike keeps nodding, looking down at the folder in his lap, his hands clenched tight around it.

Please, he thinks, just let me sleep.

But sleep doesn't help. In his dreams, he's back at Freddy's, hovering above the office. His sanctuary, his prison. Looking down from above makes it terribly small. A dollhouse. A haze of pink floats over the desk. Beside it, a nest of swirling cables. They are talking to each other, but he can't hear a word of it. Time has little meaning, but he watches them for long enough that he's startled when they vanish.

Did they leave? Did they disappear? He doesn't know. It doesn't matter, in the end. They're gone just the same.

A shadow appears in the doorway. Long legs, slim waist, lean shoulders. Red eyes sear through the darkened room as Bonnie glides into the office. Purple ears twitch, restless, as he begins to scan the room. It's difficult to remember the size of him, the barely-contained violence, the coiled menace nested in his graceful frame. Like this, Bonnie reminds Mike of nothing so much as a porcelain doll, cracked, misplaced, and forgotten.

He is still beautiful. He's always been beautiful. When his ears stop their roving to point in a single direction. When he turns his eyes before his head. When he stoops down, folding himself more neatly than a human ever could, and scoops up an abandoned phone with delicate fingers.

A soft click. The screen turns on. Bonnie looks at it from a few inches away, eyes reflecting the password screen into infinity.

Is this a bad thing? someone asks in a soft, piping voice. A child.

The phone vanishes into Bonnie's sleeve. In an instant, the android is upright and impeccable. He adjusts one glove and turns on his heel, leaving Mike alone.

Is this a bad thing? the little voice repeats.

I don't know, Mike says. At least, he thinks he does. It's kind of hard to tell, in dreams.

You should check, the child urges. I think it'll be important.

Mike floats there, silent, looking down at the empty office, as the child continues to speak. Their words flow over him, around him, through him. He should say 'yes'. But he's made so many promises already. The word falls apart on his tongue.

The voice no longer belongs to a child. It's a man's now, deep and unfamiliar. The hallways rumble with it.

Please, you need to. Before 'he' comes back. They don't know what's out there. They can't know. It's all that keeps them safe.

More words, all meaningless. Mike drifts.

When he comes back to himself, it's afternoon, and Mike's been staring at the basement wall for hours. He's still wearing his work clothes. All his bruises pulse in unison. The folder is under his head, like a pillow. It's not terribly comfortable. He leaves it where it is and gets up.

Does he have work tomorrow? Probably. His memory is fuzzy and full of holes at the moment, but somehow he doubts last night's hospital run is enough to get him off work.

He could just... not show up, he supposes. But that would leave him stuck here. Unless he tries pushing Aunt Sharon's tolerance of his wandering, which. No. She's better than uncle Jack, but Mike has no doubt that she'd lock him in if he pressed too hard. He doesn't know how to pick locks. Better to stay productive and give her something less serious to scold him over. He takes a step forward and almost yelps.

What did he just –

Oh. It's a phone. His phone, he supposes, laid out neatly beside his mattress. That's definitely not where he left it. He picks it up with a soft, pained noise and turns the screen on. Sure enough, Aunt Sharon's fingerprints are all over it.

Too bad for her, he never had a chance to use it. Nothing incriminating on this device. Just – he notices a little icon at the top of the screen and selects it – a call from 'Coworker 2'.

Huh. Wonder which of them that is? The call log has no answers for him. No message, either. His answering machine hasn't been set up yet. Mike rolls his eyes and drops the phone on his bed. What's the point of a cell phone if you have to set up the 'record message' function manually?

Enough. His thoughts are going in circles. Maybe he'll feel more alive once he washes up.

The bathroom is cramped as usual, and today is not a good day: the light refuses to turn on at all, leaving him to splash water on his face in the dark and brush his teeth in the dark. Purple shows up black in the mirror. His entire neck is black. Turning his head aches, but he keeps doing it anyway, hoping against hope he can find an angle where he doesn't look like a murder victim.

Nope, never mind. Maybe, if he's lucky, it'll turn out that the mirror added some extra bruising. Fingers crossed.

...he should call someone, shouldn't he? Yeah. He was going to quit his job. The one that requires occasional social interaction as opposed to the one that keeps nearly killing him. Mike drops his head, winces, and giggles helplessly. Shit, his priorities are skewed.

Two weeks' notice. That's still a thing, right? He should give it. He dials slowly, concentrating to make sure he doesn't hit the wrong button. They've got a bit less space between them than he expected. It's throwing him off.

Nerves sing under his skin as he makes his case, but it ends up being laughably easy. All he has to do is explain that he's quitting and he's fired on the spot. He thanks his boss – ex-boss – and tosses the phone onto the mattress. A second later, he tosses himself onto the mattress and laughs hysterically into the pillow.

“So much for company loyalty.”

It's three o'clock. Nine hours until his next shift begins. The folder sits within arm's reach, full and tempting, a flash drive just peeking out.

Time to start digging.

“Bonnie.”

“Chica.”

“...how's he doing?”

“Foxy has settled down in the tunnels. More or less.”

“And Freddy?”

“...”

“Crud.”

“We still have customers in the building.”

“So he'll restrain himself until midnight and then systematically destroy the place. How lovely. Guess you won't be getting your hands on the fresh meat, after all.”

“We'll see.”

“Really, Bon? You'd fight Freddy over this? I thought you were supposed to be the calm one. You'd better be joking. I'm the one who'll have to piece you back together, and you get so weird when you're bleeding – hm? What've you got there?”

“I'm sorry?”

“The thing you're holding. It's beeping.”

“...nothing important.”