At the center of his chest was a mass of twisted flesh, crossed with neat, diagonal lines of black stitching thread; rippling out from the wound were the marks of the spring-lock suit, some scarred over years before, and some scarcely healed, the skin a shiny, angry red. He raised a hand to the wad of stitches, careful not to touch it. “Your friend inflicted this new wound,” he said mildly, then bent his head slightly forward, calling her attention to his neck. She took an involuntary step closer, and gasped.

His skin was gone, she thought at first, the innards of his neck laid open to the air. But the blood … he’d be dead. Jessica took a long, slow breath, feeling light-headed as she tried to make sense of what she saw. The wound had been covered with something else, plastic, maybe: she could see where the surrounding skin had fused to it, healing red and ugly. Through the clear material, whatever it was, she could see his throat—she didn’t know enough about anatomy to name the parts, but they were red and blue, blocks of muscle and strings of veins or tendons. Wedged in among them were things that never belonged inside a human body; small scraps of metal, embedded in the tissue. There were too many to count. The man moved, and they glinted in the light. Jessica gasped, and he wheezed, clearly struggling to breathe with his neck turned the way it was. Something caught her eye as he moved, and she leaned in closer: she was almost touching him now, and the smell was awful: a noxious perfume of disinfectant. She peered through the clear shield and saw it: a spring, its coils wrapped tightly around what looked like three veins, the sharp ends plunged deep into red muscle tissue.

Jessica stepped back and almost tripped on the fallen mannequin that had been Springtrap. She kicked away the jumble of limbs, recovering her balance, and looked into the man’s mutilated face again.

“Yeah, I know you. Didn’t you used to be a mall guard?” she said. His fists clenched, and his eyes darkened with fury.

“Spare me. Dave the guard was a character, one concocted on a moment’s notice to play you for a fool, you and your friends. It was insulting. It doesn’t take a great thespian to pretend to be an idiot night guard, as long as you can get around inconspicuously. I have not been inconspicuous for some time. It hardly matters now anyway, as this is all that’s left of me.” His voice gargled with despair.

“Come sit with me, Jessica.” The animatronic girl dragged his IV stand with one hand, helping him back to a corner, where more medical devices and a reclining chair awaited. Jessica eyed the door, bracing herself to move, when the quiet was broken by what sounded like a child’s scream in the distance.