The Week Before, page 9
You stick to the plan. Sometimes the animatronics are more dangerous when you can’t hear them, and just because the music has stopped doesn’t mean they have.
You keep moving forward. You should be hitting the Breaker Room any minute now. Your knees hurt from crawling on them, and your hands are caked with grime. You keep having to brush cobwebs and tiny spiders from your hair and neck. You are going to take a long hot shower when you get home.
You reach another corridor branching to your right, sooner than expected. Does this go to the Breaker Room or somewhere else?
IF YOU LISTEN FOR CLUES TO WHERE YOU ARE, tap/touch here
IF YOU HEAD TO THE RIGHT, tap/touch here
IF YOU KEEP MOVING FORWARD, tap/touch here
The silence makes you nervous. You don’t want to move for fear of making too much noise and being detected by the animatronics. And without their music playing in the Dining Area, it’s harder to orient yourself in the vents.
So you wait and listen. The only sounds you can hear are your own heartbeat pounding in your ears and your shallow breathing in the confined space.
But waiting pays off. The music in the Dining Area resumes—it seems to be coming from the corridor on the right.
The music should muffle the sound of your movement in the vent, and there’s a good chance all four animatronics are still partying together in the Dining Area. You push on to get a look ahead—and there it is, the Breaker Room! Unfortunately, a grate is covering the vent, but you can see the power panel on the wall, agonizingly out of reach.
You’re about to kick at the cover to try to pop it off when the music abruptly stops again. You listen, but footsteps echo in the vents from all over the restaurant. The animatronics could be anywhere and everywhere. You have to shut off the lights, and fast!
TRY TO KICK OFF THE VENT COVER tap/touch here
WAIT AND HOPE FOR MORE MUSIC tap/touch here
IF YOU HAVE THE BONUS ITEM, YOU MAY USE IT tap/touch here
You’re 75 percent sure that the Breaker Room is on your right, so you take the turn and advance slowly.
You’re maybe closer to 50 percent sure you’re going in the right direction, but that certainty goes down the farther you crawl. Is it possible you’ve gotten so turned around that you’ve overshot the Breaker Room and are somehow headed in the opposite direction? If you didn’t know any better, you’d say you were heading toward Pirate Cove because you hear Foxy singing ahead of you.
You stop to turn around, but then you notice a dim glow ahead of you in the darkness. You head toward it, thinking it might be the exit to the Breaker Room after all. Foxy’s singing gets louder—it seems to be right in front of you, but the vent has a way of bouncing sound around in disorienting ways.
Your skin raises in goose bumps, and the hairs on the back of your neck curl up. Too late, you realize that the light you’re chasing is Foxy’s left eye. He’s in the vent with you!
Foxy lifts his eyepatch, and now there are two glowing eyes only ten feet away, and coming ever closer.
He makes a terrible racket as he scrabbles toward you in the metal corridor. Then he opens his mouth.
The last thing you hear is his horrible, humanlike scream reverberating around you.
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You decide to keep moving. If you missed the correct turn, you’ll just back up and try again.
Some dust filtering down from the top of the ventilation shaft makes you sneeze. You stop and wipe your nose with the back of your hand—and it’s only because you pause for that moment that you hear something moving behind you.
Thump, thump, thump, thump. Whatever it is was keeping pace with you, so you didn’t notice the noise until now.
From the way the metal trembles against your palm, it’s something larger and heavier than you.
Your size and speed are the only advantages you have over Freddy, Bonnie, and Chica. So you move faster, hoping you can get out of the vent before your stalker catches up.
There’s the exit up ahead! And you were right—it’s the Breaker Room. You put on another burst of speed.
But before you reach the end of the shaft, you feel a sharp pain in your right leg. You look back. There’s a giant fishhook stuck in it. Dragging you backward.
Wait, not a fishhook—it’s a pirate hook, belonging to Foxy the Pirate. Just your luck, as he’s the one animatronic you can’t outrun.
You grab on to the grate covering the vent as Foxy keeps pulling. You grit your teeth against the pain of the steel grille digging into your fingers, holding on for dear life, until you black out.
TO START FROM THE BEGINNING, tap/touch here
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You’re so close to your goal, you decide to risk it and kick that cover off. If you’re fast and lucky enough, you’ll be able to turn off the power before anyone can get into the room.
You start kicking at the grate, but it’s sturdier than you expected, considering the deteriorating state of everything else around here. Each impact of your shoe against the metal grille only seems to bend it—and make a tremendous banging noise.
“This must be why … they call it … the Breaker Room,” you mutter in between kicks. “Because you have … to break your way in.”
Someone groans.
“Fair,” you say. “Not my best dad joke.” Your daughter would have hated it, too. But she isn’t here (thank goodness!), so who was that? You glance over your shoulder and see not a little girl, but Chica the Chicken crawling toward you, head twitching, beak snapping, eyes red.
You kick harder at the grate until it finally explodes outward and clatters against the wall, dangling by one resilient bolt. You propel yourself out of the vent and scramble to your feet in the Breaker Room. Chica screams and continues crawling toward you.
You hold up your hands and back away. “Come on, the joke wasn’t that bad.”
You’re so focused on her, you’re surprised when Foxy bursts through the door and gets to you first.
TO START FROM THE BEGINNING, tap/touch here
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You hold out a little longer in the hopes that the music will resume. Your patience is rewarded when a new song begins. Not the dance music from the Dining Area, but Freddy Fazbear’s music box rendition of a classical piece—closer than the Dining Area and coming closer still.
You fight the urge to hide in the vent, not trusting an animatronic to sneak up behind you while you’re preoccupied worrying about Freddy.
Freddy is still some distance off, so you kick at the metal vent cover until it finally pops free and clatters to the floor. The music is louder now, and the tune is almost over. You don’t want to find out what will happen when it ends.
CRAWL INTO THE BREAKER ROOM tap/touch here
Each time you shift your weight in the ventilation shaft, the metal groans and the footsteps outside pause. When they resume, they’re closer. It’s only a matter of time before the animatronics get into the Breaker Room, and then you won’t be able to stop them.
Or worse, they may get into the vents.
A distraction would buy you some time.
You take out your mobile phone. The battery indicator is low—you’ve been using it intermittently for days and you don’t have the right charger for it. Hopefully, it can get you through the rest of the week.
You want the animatronics as far away from you as possible, but you know if you dial the Security Office phone directly, they won’t hear it and be drawn to it. So you dial a series of numbers in sequence to lure them away. First the Dining Area. You hear the phone ringing and the footsteps close by move toward it.
It’s working!
You wait thirty seconds and dial Pirate Cove. You can barely hear that phone from here, the sound echoing in the vents. After another thirty seconds pass, you call the Security Office. You can’t hear the phone ring from here, but you trust it has taken some of the heat off you. You keep the line open while you kick off the ventilation grate. It falls to the floor with a clatter that you hope won’t bring the animatronics right back.
CRAWL INTO THE BREAKER ROOM tap/touch here
This room is unfriendly to human life. Exposed power conduits run along the ceiling and power cables, and wires dangle down the walls and from the ceiling. You don’t want to touch any of them! The air around you buzzes with electricity. It’s at least twenty degrees warmer in here than anywhere else in the restaurant.
It would be really easy for a fire to start in here, you think. No one would ever question it.
Sweat drips down your forehead and back as you study the power control panel. There are five round buttons, like elevator buttons, faintly glowing green.
Green is good. That means they’re on.
You should be able to just push them to turn off power to each area of the restaurant, but you don’t know whether you need to press them in a certain order or risk shorting out the entire system.
All your life, you’ve gotten used to not pushing buttons, especially when you don’t know what they do, but it seems like that’s your official job lately.
Well, this is what you came here for, so you’d better do something!
IF YOU PUSH THE BUTTONS ONE AT A TIME FROM LEFT TO RIGHT, tap/touch here
IF YOU PUSH ALL THE BUTTONS AT THE SAME TIME, tap/touch here
IF YOU TRY TO FIGURE OUT A CERTAIN SEQUENCE TO PUSH THE BUTTONS IN, tap/touch here
Okay, let’s not overthink this, you think.
Or maybe you should overthink it?
This place has been making you question everything and second-guess yourself at almost every step, but sometimes you need to follow your instincts and use common sense. That’s why they hired you, isn’t it?
Isn’t it?
In all your years with Fazbear Entertainment, they haven’t exactly had people lining up to fill positions, and it’s been harder and harder to hire new staff, thanks to negative news coverage of a few isolated incidents. You were so proud when they hired you for security, but what if you were the only candidate?
Well, you’ve proven your value time and time again. Tonight is no different. You’re going to leave Freddy’s with a spotless record and a glowing recommendation, so you’ll have your pick of opportunities—a job that will give you more time to spend with Coppelia.
And a lower chance of suffering serious harm, disability, or death on the job.
You quickly press each button on the panel in sequence. They glow crimson and a soft hum indicates power shutting off around the restaurant. Then, one by one, the buttons turn green again as the system resets.
You quietly crack open the door to peek into the Dining Area. The main lights are now out.
IF YOU SNEAK THROUGH THE DARK RESTAURANT TO THE SECURITY OFFICE, tap/touch here
IF YOU TAKE THE VENTS BACK TO THE SECURITY OFFICE, tap/touch here
The buttons are close enough together that you can just about push them all at the same time. That could be a kind of fail-safe, you reason, because there’s no way someone would do that by accident, but it would be easy to push the buttons one at a time.
You place your left thumb against the first button and spread the fingertips of your right hand over the remaining four buttons. You feel something like a tingle or tickle in your hands, and the buttons hum at your touch. The hair on your head lifts away as if charged with static.
“Here goes,” you say.
You push all five buttons simultaneously and the panel starts sparking. The buttons flash and start to scald your skin, but you can’t pull your hands away—your muscles are locked as 1.21 gigawatts of power pump through you, your hands completing a big electrical circuit.
You smell something like cooking bacon and burnt hair, and then it’s lights out—for you!
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Nothing is as it seems at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza. There must be a trick to this, or this is all a trick. You stare at the glowing buttons on the control panel. The metal around them is scratched. These faint lines could be numbers telling you what order to press the buttons in …
You rub your eyes. This place is getting to you. You look around for other clues. There’s a faded poster of Bonnie on the back of the door—the intended way to enter and leave this room.
That could be significant. Why would someone put a mascot poster in here? Only staff would ever come to the Breaker Room. In big bright letters, the poster reads PARTY TIME! but the word Time is scratched out.
You’ve played enough point-and-click adventure games to realize this might be a hint. You need to press these buttons to shut down the partying.
Wait, there are five buttons, and five letters in the word party. P-A-R-T-Y. What if each button is one letter, and you need to press them in alphabetical order?
So the second button would be first, because it’s P. You press it and the light changes from green to red. Now A is next. You push the first button.
You’re so certain you’re on to something, you miss Freddy entering the room—to shut you down!
TO START FROM THE BEGINNING, tap/touch here
TO TRY THIS NIGHT AGAIN, tap/touch here
It would be faster to take a more direct route back to the Security Office, but strange enough, you feel more comfortable in the ventilation shaft. It’s the only way to travel!
The trip doesn’t take you as long as you thought it would, since you know the way now. Once you thought you heard something scraping and clanking and thumping in the vents, but it was pretty far away, off near Pirate Cove.
“It’s almost six a.m., Foxy,” you call out softly. While you doubt he heard you or would listen if he did, for some reason, he does not come after you.
When you crawl out of the vent into the Security Office, you see that the clock reads 5:57 a.m. It’s close to quitting time.
WAIT FOR 6:00 A.M. AND HEAD HOME tap/touch here
You really didn’t think this through. To get from the West Hall corridor to the right side of the Dining Area, you have to either sneak along the back of the Dining Area or go back and cut across the Security Office to the East Hall.
Rather than waste any more time, you decide to take your chances where you are.
Just keep dancing, you think.
With all the lights on, the animatronics notice you right away, and they are delighted to have an audience. You barely make it halfway across the room before Bonnie snatches you up.
They give you the best seat in the house at the front of the Dining Area. It gives you a perfect view of the stage, where Freddy, Bonnie, and Chica perform increasingly disturbing songs and dance routines. You have no choice but to watch and hope that their batteries wear down eventually—and try not to think about what they’ll do with you when they get bored.
TO START FROM THE BEGINNING, tap/touch here
TO TRY THIS NIGHT AGAIN, tap/touch here
You’re already on the left side of the Dining Area, so it’s a shorter trip to the north end of it—and you want to spend as little time in here with the animatronics as you can.
You crawl along, keeping behind the tables and out of their line of sight. But there’s a big gap between the tables near Pirate Cove. They don’t want anyone sitting too close to the entrance.
You keep an eye on Freddy, Foxy, Bonnie, and Chica. When their attention is elsewhere, you sprint toward the next table. When you’re halfway across, the music abruptly stops. You instinctively dive-roll to your left—through the curtains into the dark entrance of Pirate Cove.
You bruise your shoulder, but that likely hurts less than being forced to occupy the same space as an exoskeleton in a mascot suit.
The animatronics didn’t see you. They’re still going about their business. Another song starts up, playing backward. “Misery” … “Agony” …
But for how long?
You might be trapped in Pirate Cove for a while, waiting for your chance to move forward. But this is also a rare opportunity: You’ve never been back here before, and with Foxy enjoying his comeback tour with the old band, you can look around this area while he’s gone. Maybe there’s another way to the Breaker Room through here.
IF YOU LOOK AROUND PIRATE COVE, tap/touch here
IF YOU PEEK THROUGH THE CURTAINS TO SEE IF IT’S SAFE, tap/touch here
You crouch-run toward the party table closest to the West Hall entrance. Chica swivels her head in your direction, but you drop flat to the floor before she spots you.
You squeeze between two chairs to get under the table and wince when one of them scrapes along the tile. It turns out the cleaning crew doesn’t do a great job under tables. The tiles are sticky and crumbs dig into the palms of your hands as you crawl across them. You encounter a slice of petrified pizza that almost makes you gag.
Then there’s the pile of small bones you happen across. The restaurant’s chicken wings are boneless, so you don’t know what these could be.
This is so disgusting. You’ve come to realize that not everyone has been as diligent at their work as you, and you wonder what other corners are being cut around here.
You’re about to cross to an adjoining table when it suddenly tips over. You dart back out of sight and scurry to get under another table just as the one you leave is tipped away. Bonnie smashes his guitar down inches from where your head was a moment ago.
Bonnie and Chica are destroying the Dining Area, and there are only so many tables to hide under.
They have found a new game to play: Whack-a-Ralph!
TO START FROM THE BEGINNING, tap/touch here
TO TRY THIS NIGHT AGAIN, tap/touch here
As you look around Pirate Cove, you consider why you’ve never been back here before, even during the day. The only reason you can come up with is Foxy makes you uncomfortable.
