Beth considered herself a pretty good sport as far as the new school leadership was concerned: her Alpha status, earned through being friends with most of the leadership team (Alan was not included in this), was a big plus, and two weeks of saying the Pledge of Allegiance hadn't dulled whatever meager patriotism she possessed.

The other day, at the third football game of the year (against one of Heller's many nemeses, the St. Sebastian Sea Lions), Juliet pointed out to her the multiple rows of neatly dressed Heller students attending the game, all clutching identical cups of water and wearing identical foam fingers. Occasionally someone, either Frank or Alan, would bark a command, and everyone would do the wave or clap a few times in thunderous unison.

"Wait until Frank brings the conductor's baton to lead them in 'We Will Rock You,'" Juliet whispered to Beth.

"Oh, delightful. This isn't creepy at all."

"Of course it isn't creepy. Duh."

A few minutes later, after Heller scored another goal, Frank walked up a hastily erected podium facing the audience, took out his baton, and began counting in threes: the audience, still facing forward, began patting their thighs and clapping, with a few brave ones singing along. These brave souls drew extra attention from Frank with his conducting, and all while the game raged on the field, all the assembled students, cheerleaders pepping them up, sang murderously "We Will Rock You."

Beth thought the song was nice and all, but couldn't help thinking there was something eerie about the entire affair. Juliet obviously said it wasn't creepy, but this was the same Juliet that had the other day said that the security cameras in the restrooms were "necessary in case people were doing cocaine," which also wasn't ironclad logic—Beth could think of nothing more creepy than having security cameras in the restrooms.

"So anyway, Juliet, here's a hypothetical situation for you: suppose that the school were to look through students' texts and social media, app settings, voicemails, all those things, to see if they were doing anything against the rules. Would that be creepy to you?" Beth asked after the applause from the audience (all synchronized, of course) concluded.

"Oh, like TigerTalk. That's not creepy at all. It's good that you're asking those sorts of questions, though—paranoia is a sign of intelligence."

"So what would be creepy to you? If that isn't it?"

"There's this one horror game where a security guard's stuck in a pizza parlor while a bunch of animatronics are trying to kill him. Now that's what I call creepy. But it's also a good branding opportunity: Frank was thinking about commissioning a bunch of tiger animatronics to use as a security patrol. Glowing eyes to see at night, the ability to sneak around silently or sprint, tranquilizer darts, stainless steel teeth—you know, the usual security features."

"Why, Juliet, do I need to know this? I'm going to have nightmares now."

"I don't know, thought it was a cool idea worth sharing."

"How much would these cost?"

"A fair bit, but we've been able to cut costs by only providing toilet paper to higher castes, and we also found a new supplier for the others' school lunches. Great track record—they even serve San Quentin!"

"Cool..."

These new insights did little to shake Beth's burgeoning notion that being a good sport with everything was going to bite her in the butt someday—or inject her with tranquilizer. After the game and a similarly eerie performance of "We Are The Champions," Beth tracked down Ms. Foster seeking spiritual guidance under the guise of "why the Bosnia-Herzegovina is leadership building security robots that are explicitly modeled after ones from a horror game?".

"Oh, those things? Frank told me that was just a funny prank he had tried to submit to the Insight last year for April Fools'. Juliet overheard us talking about it, and Frank jokingly told her to calculate the expenses involved, and that kept her busy for a class period and obviously tonight. Yeah, we're cutting costs on non-essential supplies, but that's not the $50 million it would take to build four robots with equipped rocket launchers, signal jammers, and titanium-reinforced endoskeletons. Juliet still thinks we have the budget for those? Poor thing." Ms. Foster shook her head a few times in that way she typically reserved for students asking for extensions.

"That's nice to hear, Ms. Foster, but suppose we had the $50 million. Maybe some rich billionaire feels remorse for poaching too many tigers and wants to earn some good karma. Would we be getting psychopathic Terminator-style tigers? Or, I guess, 'TigerNators?'"

"We'd have to clear it with Mr. Kurtz and the superintendent, but I don't see why that would be an issue. It's a natural progression from our new innovations like security cameras in the restrooms, don't you think?" Ms. Foster asked somewhat rhetorically.

"Juliet talked about those too. She said they're meant to stop people from doing cocaine. What's your justification for them?"

"You know, Beth, you ask a lot of questions for an Alpha. It worries me you don't have enough faith in your leadership to do the right thing. If Juliet says they're to prevent people from doing cocaine, just know that she has her position for a reason, and I sure hope your obsession with these security cameras isn't because they're stopping you from doing cocaine!"

"Ms. Foster, I don't know—"

"Now you're very lucky, miss, that you're friends with Juliet and the rest of them, or else you'd be right on your way to becoming a Beta or a Gamma. Now, if you don't mind, I'd like to enjoy the rest of my evening."

As Beth drove herself home, she tried to summarize, talking to herself, what she had learned that night. Football and cheerleading had simultaneously been ruined for her when the cheer team's usual slogans were replaced with joyful ones as "Crush their skulls!" and "Drink their blood!," and after that spectacle with Queen, she wasn't sure if she was a fan of audiences as a general concept either. Being on the right side of history, as Frank often said, had its advantages: insolence was met with condescension instead of censure. Beth's parents often told her that she didn't have a good sense of humor, and maybe it was time she found one. Security cameras in the restrooms were funny! TigerNators were funny! The new slogans and militaristic atmosphere were funny! Everything was a big joke, and the biggest joke was on her for playing along with it all!

Cheddar was taciturn before bed, as usual. The one time Beth could have really used a miracle, his button eyes furling at the edges or his stitched mouth contorting itself into a smile, she had nothing but that triplet beat stuck in her head. It took her a while to fall asleep that night, even though she felt her body grow stiff and thoughts slow, trapping her in prison with whatever her subconscious manifested. That beat persisted, a funeral dirge for her soul.

Beth stood by her bed, flashlight in hand, her thoughts racing like someone was vigorously scrambling her brain in a frying pan. It was dark—shouldn't her nightlight be on? What was that poster hanging by her door? Some sort of restlessness drove her to step into the hallway—why was it so quiet, and why was she up at 3:95 AM? Wait, what? Beth swept her flashlight around as she went down the steps and started walking toward the garage, feeling that there was no reason an upstanding girl like her should linger in houses in such unusual time-zones.

As she neared the door, she heard an all-too-familiar rhythm that was somehow even more terrifying than it had been at the football game. No singing this time, just boom boom crash, boom boom crash. She stopped. It grew louder. She opened the door a crack and looked through. Two glowing eyes in the distance, walking from across the street, seemingly accelerating as the triplet beat grew and the footsteps, too, of metal on concrete grew louder to match the beat. Beth ran back and up the stairs, hearing the door to the garage crumple and splinter, into her bedroom, and under her covers, all as that thing chasing her grew closer, and barged through her door, and yanked the blankets off her all while Beth was screaming and too scared to look knowing exactly in her mind somehow what that thing was bearing on her.

Beth jolted herself awake and waved her fist around before realizing it was not a flashlight and she was in her room—her real room, not wherever she had just come from. She looked around for Cheddar and found him on the floor; clearly she had knocked him off in her flailing. It was a hair past 4 AM, and so Beth fixed her covers, put Cheddar in his rightful place, and tried to sleep more, her heart still pounding. A moment later, she was standing somewhere else in her house, flashlight in hand, and her legs turned to gelatin again just as she could hear the chase beginning anew. Then a few more minutes wide awake in her real bed before she drifted off to sleep, and the cycle repeated itself until her alarm rang, which she had discovered some prankster had changed to "We Will Rock You."

Discussion Questions:

Why would the club people have spent this much time humoring the discount Freddy Fazbear idea?

From what we've seen across You Must Remember This and this sequel, what is Beth's opinion on the club?

If the school is this unusual at sports games, how do you think other schools in the district have been seeing them?