“I am a brilliant man, make no mistake. But what you see before you is a combination of all sorts of machinations and magic. My only real accomplishment was making something that could walk.” He reached out and tapped the leg of the animatronic standing at his side; she did not react. “No small accomplishment. Although it’s not happening as fluidly as you think. A lot of what you see is just in your head.” He wheezed a laugh, then stopped himself, ending with a pained cough before going on. “That was Henry’s idea not to try to reinvent the wheel. Why try to create the illusion of life, when your mind can do it for us?”

“She’s more than an illusion, though,” Jessica said plainly.

“Quite right,” Afton answered thoughtfully. “Quite right. But that’s why we’re here—to discover the secret of that last ingredient, what you might call the spark of life.”

“Is that why I’m here, too?” Jessica clenched her jaw.

“I believe you came here of your own free will, didn’t you?” Afton said mildly.

“I didn’t tie myself up.”

“But I certainly didn’t put you in the trunk of that car,” he answered.

“We would rather have had your friend Charlie,” he continued. “But we can find a use for you.” He closed his eyes for a long moment, then opened them, meeting Jessica’s eyes. “I have faced my own mortality, Jessica. I knew I was dying and through every broken fragment of my body, I was profoundly, immeasurably afraid. I fear it more than I fear life like this, even when every waking instant is pain, and sleep is possible only when induced by enough medication to kill most people.”

“Everyone is afraid to die,” Jessica said. “And you should be more afraid than anyone else, because if there’s a hell, there’s a hole at the bottom of it reserved for you.”

Afton nodded with a moment of honest resignation. “In time, I’m sure that’s where I will find myself. But the devil has knocked on my door before, and I’ve turned him away.” He smiled.

“So, what? You want to live forever?”

William Afton smiled sadly and held out his hand to the animatronic girl; she went to him and put a protective hand on his shoulder. “Certainly not like this,” he said. Jessica glanced at the robot girl, then back to the man in front of her, his body already riddled with mechanical parts.

“So, what, you’re making yourself into a robot?” She laughed nervously, then stopped at his grave expression. “I didn’t realize that you fancied yourself a mad scientist.”

“No, that’s science fiction,” he said, unamused.

The plastic tarp moved again, and began to slide off the table, but stopped, not revealing what lay underneath.