The whimpering came again, and this time Carlton’s eyes lit on its source: a small, blond-haired boy was huddled in the darkest corner of the room, opposite the furnace. Carlton ran into the room and knelt beside the boy, who looked up at him numbly. He was bleeding from shallow cuts on his arm and one corner of his mouth, but Carlton saw no other visible injuries.

“Hey,” he whispered nervously. “Are you okay?” The boy didn’t respond, and Carlton took hold of his arms, readying to pick him up. When he touched the child, he could feel the tremors throughout his body. He’s terrified. “Come on, we’re getting out of here,” Carlton said. The little boy pointed to the creature on the table.

“Save him, too,” the boy whispered tearfully. “He hurts so bad.” He squeezed his eyes shut. Carlton glanced at the large, motionless figure on the table by the furnace: he hadn’t considered that it might be a person. He scanned the room to make sure nothing else was moving, then patted the boy on the shoulder and got to his feet.

He approached the table cautiously, keeping to the wall instead of walking across the center of the room. As he got closer, the burning smell of metal and oil rushed up against him, and he covered his face with his sleeve, trying not to gag as he examined the prone figure.

It’s not a person. On the table, illuminated by the flickering orange light, was a mass of metal: a melted, clumpy skeleton of metal bulges and blobs, barely resembling anything at all. Carlton studied the thing for a long moment, then looked back at the little boy, uncertain what to say.

“Heat,” a voice snarled, and Carlton spun around to face a twisted man, creeping out from the shadows. “Heat is the key to all of this,” the man went on as he haltingly approached the table. “If you keep all this at just the right temperature, it’s malleable, it’s moldable, and it’s highly, highly effective; or maybe contagious is the word. I suspect you could put it in anything, but it’s best to put it into something that you can control—at least to a certain extent.” William Afton lurched into the light, and Carlton stepped back reflexively, though the table was between them. “It’s an interesting alchemy,” William continued. “You can make something that you control completely, but that has no will of its own, like a gun, I suppose.” He ran his withered hand over the silver arm of the creature. “Or you can take a drop of … pixie dust.” He smiled. “And you can create a monster that you … mostly control, one with unlimited potential.”