I arrived at Circus Baby's Pizza Party Rentals at noon the next day. You know, this might just be the first time I've seen the place in the daytime. It's still creepy how it's in the middle of nowhere, but it's not AS creepy since I'm not in the dark.

I entered the building and found Tyler right behind the desk, looking at some sort of document. When the door opened, he looked up and saw me.

"Good afternoon, Alice; glad you could make it."

"Of course, Tyler."

"Please, come on back and let's talk."

He unlocked the door separating the lobby from the rest of the facility, and I proceeded to go through it. After making my way to behind the desk, he motioned at two chairs facing each other at the other end of the room. I took that as my cue to walk over to one of them and sit. He followed behind me and sat in the other chair so we were a few feet away from each other. I noticed there was a TV along the wall between the chairs.

"Look, Alice," he said in a calm and serious way, "I know I've come off as the happy, energetic, overly-excited boss, but if you haven't noticed, I take things like what happened to you very seriously."

"Yes, I've definitely picked up on that."

"And because I take this seriously, I need to confirm something from your own mouth."

"Um...sure. What is it?"

He paused and stared at me, like he wasn't sure how to word what he wanted to ask. Finally, though, he asked it.

"Alice, do you know who put you in that spring lock suit?"

I stared back at him, a tiny bit confused.

"Let me rephrase," he continued. "Do you know WHAT put you in that spring lock suit?"

I felt my eyebrows raise at that.

"What are you getting at?" I asked him.

"Please answer the question," he replied in that uncharacteristically cold tone.

"Um...well, yes. I think I do."

He continued to stare at me, which was his silent way of asking me to clarify. I sighed, closed my eyes, and shook my head.

"When I was in the suit," I said quietly, "I heard the voice of Circus Baby. And that voice told me that she...it...put me in the suit, even directly stating that sh...er, it...kidnapped me."

He still stared at me, his expression not showing any sign of change, despite what I said.

"I'm not necessarily saying that the animatronic did this to me, I'm just saying that that's what I heard and experienced," I concluded.

Tyler slowly nodded and sighed.

"Normally, I'd call you insane," he admitted, "but I've been reviewing some things, and...well..."

He turned on the TV and revealed what appeared to be security cam footage. The camera seemed to have a night vision feature, so that made seeing into the room that much easier. It didn't take long, though, to see what Tyler was getting at.

I could see a tall, humanoid figure walking towards the spring lock suit. The figure was easily recognizable: Circus Baby. She seemed to be carrying someone in her arms. You didn't have to be Sherlock Holmes to guess who it was. The suit was already opened, so all she had to do was place me into the suit, press a button on the lower back, and boom: the suit closed, leaving me trapped inside. Baby then walked off, only leaving me alone in the room.

The TV turned off. Tyler and I slowly looked at each other.

"Alice...I recall you saying something about the robots wanting to harm you, correct?"

"Well, yeah, but I didn't really want to believe it."

"Yeah, neither did I..."

He then placed his head in his hands and let out a huge sigh.

"Alice, I'm going to tell you something I probably shouldn't be telling anyone, let alone a new employee."

The fact he seemed to be so worried about this is really making me uncomfortable.

"What is it?" I finally asked.

"Well...my family...it has a certain...history, let's put it."

"What kind of history are we talking about?"

"Well, remember how I mentioned that my grandfather, William Afton, designed all the animatronics for Fazbear Entertainment?"

"Yeah...?"

"Well...there's something about his designs that are quite...how should I put this...odd."

"Such as?"

"Well, my grandfather, while it was never officially proven, always seemed to have a peculiar interest in children."

"So? I'm sure lots of older men are caring towards children."

"No, it's not like that, Alice. He wasn't showing signs of caring for them. In fact, quite the opposite."

"Huh?"

"He apparently hated children more than your stereotypical cranky old man. In fact, he apparently hated children to the point where he would come off as if he wanted to...kill them."

"Oh, God!"

"But he obviously couldn't just kill them himself; that would be too risky. So, he apparently used his skills with robotics to create...well...for lack of a better term, death traps."

I then thought back to the recording I heard in the police station, the interview between William Afton and his boss. How some of the features in the robots didn't make a lot of sense. But now, they're starting to.

"The Circus Baby Gang," I said aloud.

Tyler sighed and nodded.

"While they did, indeed, serve as children's entertainment robots," he continued, "they also doubled as a method of luring and killing children."

"That's awful..."

"It gets worse...they actually managed to succeed. A little girl, one of the kids they got to test the restaurant before opening."

My eyes widened with realization.

"It didn't happen to be Baby who did it, was it?"

Tyler's eyebrows raised.

"How did you know?"

"Because she told me herself! That something felt wrong with her...that she didn't know why what happened, well, happened."

Tyler sighed again.

"The fact she's even talking to you... I thought I had guaranteed that something like that wouldn't happen."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, I lied about the only difference between the original designs and the current ones being the voice lines. I also removed all commands to kill, as well as all sentience in general. For a while, it seemed to be working. But then recently, a lot of the robots started to malfunction, like something's wrong with them. Maybe it's their old programming slowly breaking through again... The only one who's managed to behave in recent times, ironically enough, is Baby."

That's when I remembered what Baby told me: that it's important to pretend. Was she pulling a Toy Story and not acting alive when the mechanics were around? But why would she act alive around me? What's her obsession over me in particular?

"This video footage...," Tyler continued, "well, it confirms my biggest fear: the robots' sentience has returned. And if that returned, maybe more features I don't want them to have have returned, as well..."

"I'm really sorry, Tyler..."

He sighed and looked up, as if just talking to himself.

"I was never the best with my grandfather's machines... I didn't get stuck with his intelligence, but at least I didn't get stuck with the Afton curse of feeling homicidal like my uncle did."

"Your uncle?"

He looked at me.

"Yeah, Michael Afton. He disappeared in the early 70s, but from what I could figure out, he had these tendencies worse than my grandfather did. He really didn't try to hide his crimes; he just wanted bodies."

"Jesus...!"

"For the longest time, nobody knew what happened to him, but as of a few years ago, new information came out."

"What kind of information?"

"Remember that haunted house based on Freddy's that was going to open up in 2017?"

"Yeah, of course; it burned down the night before opening. One of the owners even died on the property that night!"

"Well, since then, one of the other owners revealed that they managed to find an old company secret that not even my grandfather knew about."

"What was it?"

"There was a secret room in every location that only employees knew about. And in one of these secret rooms, they managed to find an old prototype of spring lock suit that my grandfather made."

"And?"

"They claim there was a body in it."

"Oh...!"

"Yeah...my best guess is the spring locks collapsed on him and killed him slowly and painfully."

"Why would he wear the suit? Didn't he know how dangerous they could be?"

"Who knows? Maybe. My grandfather's animatronics have always been known to be dangerous to humans. Hell, I remember hearing a while ago that my cousin, Kenzie, was killed when someone crammed her into one of the models that wasn't meant to be a costume."

"Man... I'm sorry, Tyler."

We then sat there quietly, not sure what to say next. Finally, I gained the courage.

"Why are you telling me all this?" I asked.

"You know... I could ask myself that very question. Heh. I guess I just needed someone to tell all this to. Someone who wouldn't call me a lunatic."

I gave a small smile.

"Well, what's in the past is in the past," I told him. "Right now, we have to worry about these robots that are currently under our feet."

"You're right," he said as he stood up. "Like I told you yesterday, I'll cover your shift for tonight, possibly try to figure out what's going on with the machines. As for you, I'll check up on you after the weekend worker is finished with his days."

"Sounds like a plan," I replied as I also stood up.

"Thanks again for coming out, Alice," he said as he extended his hand.

I shook his hand as I replied, "No problem, Tyler. See ya around."

He gave a quick smile and nod as he turned and went towards what seemed to be his office. I took that as the signal for me to high-tail it out of here. As I walked towards the exit, I thought about our conversation again. Tyler seems to have it rough, both in the present and past. I hope the guy figures out what's making his grandfather's machines act the way they are.

And I just hope that I never have to worry about Circus Baby or her gang ever again. At least, until next week.